How to plan a vacation with unvaccinated kids

Families are facing a dilemma this year: They are itching to take a summer vacation, but their kids are not vaccinated. What to do?

The mental gymnastics involved in answering this question are exhausting.

So we asked epidemiologists and other public health experts — a pretty cautious group — what they are planning for their own summer vacations. Here are a few takeaways.

Does the idea of getting on a plane make you feel queasy? Or are you itching to be 35,000 feet in the air? Each family must determine its own appetite for risk, the experts said.

Even among experts, there is some uncertainty.

Jennifer Nuzzo, lead epidemiologist for the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, is planning to travel domestically this year with her family, though they have held off on picking a spot as they gather information on exposure risks. She said she was prioritizing risks that had a clear benefit to the health and development of her kids, who are 4 and 7, such as visits with family.

Tara C. Smith, a professor of epidemiology at Kent State University's College of Public Health in Ohio, will be vacationing with younger relatives who are not yet eligible for vaccination and have health conditions. The possibility of a COVID infection is "not something that I want to deal with just because we tried to go and have some fun."

After weighing options, she and her family decided to drive to a hotel near a beach that will not be packed with visitors.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now says that fully vaccinated people can travel safely on mass transportation, including planes, in the United States.

Most of the experts we spoke with plan to drive to their destinations, in part because their children are not vaccinated.

Sadie Costello, an occupational and environmental epidemiologist at the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley, has two road trips planned: a camping trip with friends where the adults are vaccinated and the kids are not, and a family trip to a rental vacation house.

"It's a balance between COVID safety and mental health," said Costello, who has two children, ages 10 and 14.

You don't necessarily need to sequester in your hometown, go camping or rent a house with a private pool like you might have done last year, although those are all fine, lower-risk options. Hotels or resorts can be safe for families, too, provided that you ask yourself a crucial question: Can you take the right precautions and keep distance between your family and other people while you are there?

Think about the places within a hotel or its surroundings where you or your family would be most likely to get infected, suggested Dr. Abraar Karan, an internal medicine physician at the Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School. It might be in a crowded elevator, an indoor restaurant or the lobby. If you are traveling with people who are not fully vaccinated, try to avoid these areas as much as possible, he said.

Whitney R. Robinson, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is hoping to vacation in South Carolina this summer with relatives, provided that case numbers are low.

She plans to do mostly outdoor activities during the trip and said she and her kids, who are 2 and 6, will avoid indoor dining or long, lingering meals.

But Robinson has started imagining other potential scenarios: If it rains, for example, they can gather indoors but will open all the windows. When indoors, "I'll probably try to wear masks and have my kids wear masks," she said.

If you're staying at a resort and plan to use a kids club that provides child care and organized activities, be sure to ask a lot of questions beforehand, the experts advised. Ideally, you would want the kids to wear masks, play in small groups at least 6 feet apart from one another and spend most of the time outdoors.

"It's similar to a school environment — but with the big difference that it's bringing together people from totally different networks from all around the world," Robinson said. "Personally, it'd be a 'no' from me."

If you are outdoors in a crowded place where your family cannot maintain 6 feet of distance from people outside your household, wearing a mask is still a good idea for your kids and yourself, too, even if you are fully vaccinated. But if you are outdoors and can maintain distance from other people, the risk of infection is very low if you choose not to wear a mask outdoors, regardless of whether you are vaccinated or not, the experts said.

"If you're more than 6 feet from somebody outdoors, I don't think your mask is going to make that much of a marginal difference at that point, because the risk is already so low," Karan said.

"The pool is a question mark," Smith said, adding that most of her vacation will be spent at the beach. "If it's very crowded, we won't be going into it."