RUTLAND, Vt. (AP) - A New Jersey summer camp that brought several hundred students to Vermont for a three-week stay at a Rutland hotel has been told the hotel is overcapacity.
After the state inspected the Holiday Inn in the town of Rutland, officials with camp Zichron Chaim were given three days to reduce the number of guests to comply with Vermont’s COVID-19 occupancy restrictions for hotels.
“The hotel can hold 600, so they can have 300 campers there,” said Vermont Public Safety Commissioner Michael Schirling. “Somewhere between 350 and 400 campers are there, so they’ve been given a warning to come into compliance in the next couple of days, and we’ll check back later in the week.”
Schirling said that beyond the occupancy issue, everything else seems to be in order.
“There isn’t any indication of any kind of noncompliance anymore than any other camp, school, child care center, or other operation in Vermont,” Schirling said. “If we’re presented with any threads that indicate that, then we will pull on those threads.”
Rabbi Moshe Perlstein, of Lakewood, New Jersey, the camp director, said he was working with state officials to reach a workable solution that keeps everyone safe. He’s seeking lodging options for the extra campers. He says he will shut the camp down if he has to, but he hopes that won’t be necessary.
“Our concern is the children should be happy, the people in Vermont should equally be as happy,” Perlstein said. “The children should be safe and the people of Vermont should be safe.”
Messages seeking comment were left with officials from the Holiday Inn Thursday.
A separate camp by the same organization being held on the campus of the now-closed Southern Vermont College in Bennington is operating without any COVID safety violations.
The arrival of bus-loads of people from New Jersey worried some local residents who feared they could bring new COVID-19 cases to the area.
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NUMBERS
On Thursday, the Vermont Health Department reported 16 new positive cases of the virus that causes COVID-19, bringing the statewide total since the pandemic began to just under 1,275. Of the new cases, 11 were in Chittenden County, two in Lamoille County and one each in Windham, Bennington and Essex.
The number of deaths remained at 56.
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