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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsEmails Reveal Chaos as Meatpacking Companies Fought Health Agencies Over COVID-19 Outbreaks in Their
For weeks, Rachel Willard, the county health director in Wilkesboro, North Carolina, had watched with alarm as COVID-19 cases rolled in from the Tyson Foods chicken plant in the center of town. Then Tyson hired a private company to take over testing, and the information suddenly slowed to a trickle.
Blinded to the burgeoning health crisis, Willard and her small staff grew increasingly agitated. The outbreak had already spread across 100 miles of the North Carolina piedmont, and two workers had died. But nearly a week after Tysons testing ended in May, the county health agency had received less than 20% of the results. The little information it did receive was missing phone numbers and other data, hindering critical efforts to follow up with infected workers, to tell them to isolate and to trace their contacts.
Our fear and alarm is the fact that close contacts and positive cases are walking around, potentially shedding the virus and infecting others, Willard, who was coordinating the response while on maternity leave, wrote to state officials on May 14.
Only after the state public health director warned Tyson that failure to turn over information could result in injunctive relief or prosecution did the testing company release the information. As of Wednesday, 599 workers had tested positive, more than a fifth of the plants workforce.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/emails-reveal-chaos-as-meatpacking-companies-fought-health-agencies-over-covid-19-outbreaks-in-their-plants/ar-BB15pdiu?li=BBnb7Kz
MurrayDelph
(5,294 posts)When I read the headline, the word "Chaos" was interpreted as the plural of Chao, as in Mrs. Moscow Mitch's family..
Renew Deal
(81,856 posts)CRK7376
(2,199 posts)from Wilkesboro and have a large population that live in Forsyth but takes the 45 mile commute up to Wilkesboro daily for work in the Chicken plant....Our infected numbers are rising on a daily basis. But our Governor said no to trumpsters RNC rally and his Secretary of DHHS slammed Tyson.
keithbvadu2
(36,788 posts)Human capital stock