The Champlain Valley Fair is scheduled to begin Friday at 3 p.m., kicking off 10 days of music, rides, fried dough and agricultural contests that will take over roughly 130 acres in Essex Junction over the next week and a half. Public health experts say even considering the extremely transmissible Delta variant, the event should be pretty Covid-19-safe because it takes place almost entirely outdoors.
“The risk of outdoor exposure has been low since the beginning,” said Pam Berenbaum, director of Middlebury College’s Global Health Program.
“Generally speaking, there have been almost no documented cases of outdoor transmission,” she said.
The fair uses around 88,000 square feet of indoor space, about twice the size of a football field.
As the largest fair in the state, it has historically pulled as many as 120,000 people to the event, giving an economic boost to businesses in the area through taxes from the event, money that goes directly to local businesses featured at the fair and hotels that host visitors.
Jeff Bartley, the marketing director for the nonprofit that puts on the fair, said he is optimistic that they will see more than 120,000 people this year.
It’s a bit of a comeback story. Last summer, fairs and field days around the state were canceled due to the pandemic, including the Champlain Valley Fair.
Although exposition leadership is eager to be back, the rebirth of what the Champlain Valley Exposition promotes as “the best 10 days of summer” comes at yet another challenging time in the pandemic as the state grapples with how to handle the Delta variant.
Berenbaum said the event should be mostly safe, but she recommends people take precautions including masking up when indoors, if someone has an unvaccinated household member, and when stagnant and in close proximity to others, such as when waiting in line for a ride.
“In any indoor space, with Delta doing what it’s doing, people should wear a mask if they can, even if they’re vaccinated,” Berenbaum said. “Even vaccinated people can transmit the virus to other people. Wearing a mask in an indoor public place is a simple and easy step people can take to protect themselves and others.”
Considering the surge of the Delta variant in the state, people should continue practices that limit transmission such as masking, distancing and hand-washing, according to Ben Lee, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the University of Vermont Children’s Hospital.
“These are pretty basic and simple interventions, but they will provide some protection,” Lee said. “At a time when we are having a lot of community transmission of the virus, the responsible thing for people to do is for everyone to do their part and continue to practice these safety measures.”
Although Vermont’s high vaccination rate has saved the state from some of the nation’s worst Delta outbreaks, the fact that 85.7% of eligible Vermonters have at least one shot has not completely shielded Vermont from the particularly voracious Delta variant.
All counties in Vermont are reporting high or substantial spread of the virus, or at least 50 cases per 100,000 people for a seven-day period, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data from Tuesday.
Bartley said the exposition never considered canceling this year’s fair, and that they are sticking to state and federal Covid-19 guidelines to keep fairgoers safe.
Right now, the CDC recommendations include masking in indoor spaces for vaccinated and unvaccinated people, and Vermont rules suggest masking in indoor spaces for the unvaccinated, a measure Bartley said the exposition plans to encourage through signage. Bartley also said that the exposition “encourages Vermonters to get vaccinated and asks people if they have symptoms to stay home.”
The exposition also made some earlier decisions to reduce the risk of Covid-19 transmission, including scrapping their usual paid concerts, where they might pack up to 10,500 people into their grandstand, and putting tribute shows with limited seating in their place to allow for social distancing.
Without the fair, the exposition could have been in big trouble, according to Bartley. Toward the beginning of the pandemic, the exposition laid off around 75% of their staff and has struggled economically through the past year and half even with the assistance of state grants and federal loans.
“We were a ghost town for 18 months,” Bartley said.
The fair helps keep the lights on for the exposition, which in turn draws people into the Champlain Valley.
The exposition plays an important role in the regional economy by bringing people into the region for meetings and events they host throughout the year, according to Cathy Davis, president of the Lake Champlain Chamber of Commerce.
“It’s kind of like our version of an arena since we don’t have one,” Davis said. “Like Madison Square Garden in New York.”
Among others, the Orleans County Fair and Caledonia Fair also plan to carry on while encouraging Covid-19 safety measures. The Orleans County Fair wrote on its website that it is following guidelines from Gov. Phil Scott and the state Department of Health. The Caledonia County fair encourages people to mask up indoors and outdoors but not requiring it, according to a representative.
