Almost 900 workers at Tyson Foods plant test positive for COVID-19
By timboss
Close to 900 workers at a Tyson Foods plant in Indiana have tested positive for the COVID-19, as per reports on Wednesday.
Dean Banks, president of Tyson Foods, announced that the company is working with Matrix Medical, a clinical services company, that will make sure COVID-19 is not spreading in plants where it has been detected.
"That gives us the team that we need to come in and make sure that we put food on the American table," Banks said on "Fox & Friends" Friday morning.
The Tyson plant, which is located in Logansport, Ind., has 890 of its 2,200 employees that have tested positive in less than 7 days -- more than 40 percent of its workforce. This is only one of many Tyson plants nationwide that have voluntarily closed due to virus outbreaks.
County officials have been working with Tyson, the largest U.S. meat supplier, in developing a plan to reopen, according to Indianapolis's WISH-TV.
Image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tyson_Oval_3D.jpg
Case County Commissioner Ryan Browning said that plan has been expedited after President Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday, ensuring meat processing plants would stay open during the coronavirus pandemic.
The businesses are now declared as “critical infrastructure” under the Defense Production Act.
“So there is some worry there that might force them to flip a switch and go but we are continuing with our plan,” Browning told the station.
Image via Pixabay
Pork processing offers workers little personal space, who typically work in a close-quarter environment, WISH-TV reported. The virus is known to spread from person-to-person within six-feet, through respiratory droplets in the air, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Tyson released a statement regarding the safety of its employees.
“We’ve been screening worker temperatures, requiring protective face coverings and conducting additional cleaning and sanitizing. We’ve also implemented social distancing measures, such as workstation dividers and more breakroom space," it said, according to the station.
Health officials reported 1,283 coronavirus cases in the county as of Tuesday. The peak number of cases is expected to hit in the next two weeks.
Indiana has seen more than 17,835 coronavirus cases and at least 1,114 deaths from the virus, as of early Friday, according to data from Johns Hopkins.
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