COVID-19 spreads through Biloxi Yacht Club after annual ball, more in-person events
It was a busy pre-Christmas weekend at the Biloxi Yacht Club. The annual Commodore’s Ball on Saturday, Dec. 12, was an evening of dinner and dancing, cocktail attire requested. On Sunday, Santa and Mrs. Claus visited the club to meet members’ grandkids, nieces and nephews.
Then came a typical week of events, including a meeting of the Marina Committee on Tuesday afternoon, a board meeting on Wednesday, and games of trivia and meals with friends in between.
A week later, around 10 members of the club have tested positive for COVID-19, including most of the members of the Marina Committee. Jay Lee, who holds the position of incoming commodore, or leader of the club, said the club had been shut down since Saturday because of the spread of cases. (Lee, who attended the ball, has tested negative.)
It isn’t clear how or when each member became infected, and with cases spiking across South Mississippi, efforts at precise contact tracing are likely futile. It is unknown if coronavirus may have been an unwelcome guest at each of the club’s events over that week.
Nancy Rogers, the outgoing commodore, and her husband both tested positive. Rogers says she doesn’t know where she was exposed.
“I’m not going to pinpoint something, because I have no idea how I got it,” she said.
The state health department has urged Mississippians to avoid all social gatherings with people outside of their households. Under an executive order that went into effect on Dec. 11, indoor gatherings should be limited to no more than 10 people. The Commodore’s Ball was held inside the club.
Lee said the club’s leadership had discussed whether to hold the event, given the circumstances of the pandemic. Because part of the group’s membership fees go toward the ball, they decided to go forward.
“It’s part of what we’ve always done through the years,” Lee said. “So we decided to have it. We figured nobody would come. I don’t think there was that many people there.”
Lee said he did not know exactly how many people attended, and that people had worn masks and kept their distance.
Photographs from the event posted to the club’s Facebook page show couples dancing shoulder to shoulder, and only one mask, lying on a table.
One one photograph, a person commented: “Dang y’all had a ball?”
The pictures were removed from Facebook on Tuesday afternoon.
A cascade of cases
Lizana Munro, who attended the ball but said she didn’t stay long, said she felt safe at the event.
“Most of these people we’ve hung out with through this whole thing,” she said.
Before this outbreak, she said, she didn’t know anyone from the club who had gotten sick.
Munro’s symptoms started with a “horrible headache” on the evening of Monday, Dec. 14. Because it was so soon after the ball and because none of her friends who were there have tested positive, she doesn’t think she picked it up there. (According to the CDC, the incubation period for COVID-19 ranges from two to 14 days.)
When Munro started feeling achy a few days later, she went to get tested. It came back positive on Saturday. Her symptoms have been mild.
On Tuesday, several people who had been at the ball attended the marina committee meeting at the club. Not long after, committee members began telling each other they had tested positive. Lee said that a number of the members who tested positive had not attended the ball.
If he could do it over again, he said, he’d still choose to hold the ball.
“Looking back we really don’t think it was the ball,” he said. “We think it had to do with that meeting. That’s what we think.”
Now, almost everyone who attended the meeting has tested positive.
Across the bridge, the Ocean Springs Yacht Club has postponed their annual Commodore’s Ball, typically held on New Year’s Eve, because of the surge in cases.
The Biloxi Yacht Club is planning to hold a dinner on New Year’s Eve, Lee said. The club’s officers will probably meet after Christmas to decide whether to go forward, he said.
“We usually have a dinner, a sit-down dinner, which we do every Friday night anyway,” Lee said. “There wasn’t going to be a band or a ball or anything.”
One member, who wanted to remain anonymous to discuss what has become a sensitive subject inside the club, said he felt many of his fellow members believed COVID was “a hoax.”
Still, he said, he had been surprised when he learned the Commodore’s Ball was still on.
“They were all at risk doing that,” he said.
