Tag Archives: meatpacking plants

As U.S. companies push to get workers vaccinated, states disagree on who’s essential

By Tina Bellon and Richa Naidu

NEW YORK/CHICAGO (Reuters) – Companies and industry groups lobbying to get their U.S. workers to the front of the line for COVID vaccination are running into a patchwork of state plans and confusion over who is essential, and who is not.

Inoculation against the disease caused by the novel coronavirus is key to safely reopening large parts of the economy and reducing the risks of illness at crowded meatpacking plants, factories and warehouses.

But before one needle has entered the arm of an American worker, confusion has broken out over who exactly is considered essential during a pandemic.

With initial vaccine doses limited and strong federal guidance lacking, it has fallen to U.S. states to determine who will be first in line to receive a vaccine, and who will have to wait well into next year.

State vaccine distribution plans reviewed by Reuters showed broad discrepancies over who would be considered essential, with some states clearly outlining specific worker groups and others not providing any clarity.

Generally, states have broad discretion when it comes to vaccine distribution and policy and are able to issue vaccination mandates for their residents.

Many states have so far followed federal guidance to give meat and food processing industry workers space in the line, but some are slowly moving away, said Mark Lauritsen, a former hog slaughter worker who now advocates on behalf of about 250,000 meatpacking and food processing workers under the United Food and Commercial Workers union.

“For example, Colorado has not moved meatpacking and meat-processing as high as some other states. So we’ll be directing a lot of our effort towards places like Colorado where we may be moved down the food chain.”

“We’re a union that has members in every state so we will be talking to every state to make our case as to where our place in line should be…Everybody is going to be jockeying for a place in line.”

More than 20 large industries have urged officials to prioritize their workers, including individual companies such as ride-hailing company Uber Technologies Inc and food delivery provider DoorDash Inc and industry groups representing truck drivers, teachers, retail workers and other business sectors.

DoorDash in its letter calling for preferred vaccine access for its delivery workers said the company could also help public health officials communicate vaccine information through its platform.

At least 22 industries, including agricultural companies, cleaning suppliers, dental hygienists, bus drivers and meat packers, also have written to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), an independent panel of health experts recommending vaccine distribution guidelines to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

WHO IS ESSENTIAL?

“We’re hopeful that local health officials start jumping on this quicker rather than later so that there’s some guidance and some better sense of how to be efficient with the essential workforce,” said Bryan Zumwalt, executive vice president of public affairs for the Consumer Brands Association.

The group representing consumer products makers including Procter & Gamble Co and Coca-Cola Co, has sent letters to nearly all 50 U.S. states and federal officials, urging their nearly 1.2 million workers to be prioritized for a vaccine.

ACIP to date has only recommended healthcare personnel and residents of long-term care facilities should receive the vaccine first – a priority not disputed by any industry or state. ACIP members did not respond to a request for comment or declined to comment pending the discussions.

While some states have said they would await the committee’s further recommendations, others went ahead and developed their own vaccine distribution priorities, a review of COVID-19 vaccine distribution plans showed.

In New York, essential frontline workers regularly interacting with the public, such as pharmacists, grocery store workers and transit employees, are slated to receive the vaccine in a second distribution phase, while Florida included all essential workers on a U.S. Homeland Security list.

But that Homeland Security department list, spanning more than 25 major industries, makes up nearly 70% of the U.S. labor force, according to researchers at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Georgia’s plan said the state was working with various industries, including poultry plants, manufacturers and warehouse distributors.

In North Carolina, which has one of the most detailed distribution plans spanning nearly 150 pages, workers in meatpacking, seafood, poultry and food processing, transportation and retail would be included in an early phase so long as they had at least two chronic conditions that put them at high risk.

Pennsylvania’s distribution plan on the other hand only includes three pages, stating merely that those “contributing to the maintenance of core societal functions” would be prioritized.

(Reporting by Tina Bellon in New York, Richa Naidu in Chicago; Editing to Joe White and Lisa Shumaker)

Coronavirus kills 93 U.S. meatpacking workers, union says

(Reuters) – The largest U.S. meatpacking union said on Thursday that 93 meatpacking and food-processing workers have died from COVID-19 and employees continue to face risks from the new coronavirus.

The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union told reporters on a conference call that over 196 of all its members, who also include grocery store workers, have died.

(Reporting by Tom Polansek, Editing by Franklin Paul)

What you need to know about the coronavirus right now 6-11-20

(Reuters) – Here’s what you need to know about the coronavirus right now:

Farm work is a risky business

From apple packing houses in Washington state to farmworkers in Florida and a California county known as “the world’s salad bowl,” outbreaks of the novel coronavirus are emerging at U.S. fruit and vegetable farms and packing plants.

Working side-by-side and back-to-back, factory employees face the same conditions that contributed to outbreaks at U.S. meatpacking plants.

By late May, there were more than 600 cases of COVID-19 among agricultural workers in Yakima County, Washington. Of those, 62% were workers in the apple industry and other packing operations or warehouses.

The health department in Monterrey County, California, reported 247 agricultural workers had tested positive for coronavirus as of June 5, 39% of county’s total cases.

Tracking down the duds in testing free-for-all

The market for COVID-19 antibody tests has ballooned in a matter of months as hundreds of products flood the world for people who want to find out whether they’ve already had the virus. The problem is, some of them don’t work properly.

As a result, European authorities aim to tighten regulation of the new sector, to weed out tests that give consistently inaccurate results and crack down on companies that make false claims.

Why do some people get sicker than others?

Diabetes, high body temperature, low oxygen saturation and pre-existing cardiac injury are some risk factors for severe COVID-19, South Korean doctors have found in a paper published by the Journal of Korean Medical Science on June 2.

The team of doctors observed 110 coronavirus patients at a hospital in Daegu, the epicenter of South Korea’s outbreak, from Feb. 19 to April 15, of whom 23 developed severe COVID-19. The patients with at least three of the four prognostic conditions developed severe conditions, said Ahn June-hong, professor of internal medicine.

Hopes for antibody cocktail

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals said it has begun human testing of its experimental antibody cocktail as a treatment for COVID-19.

The trial has an “adaptive” design and could quickly move from dozens of patients to eventually include thousands, Chief Scientific Officer George Yancopoulos told Reuters.

The dual antibody, called REGN-COV2, is being compared to a placebo treatment in hospitalized COVID-19 patients, and in COVID-19 patients who have symptoms but are not sick enough to be hospitalized.

Regeneron said its treatment could be useful even if a COVID-19 vaccine is developed since the elderly and people with compromised immune systems often do not respond well to vaccines.

Love in the time of COVID

Those looking for love during the COVID-19 pandemic have had to adapt to lockdown dating, but innovations such as video “pre-dates” may end up outliving the coronavirus.

In England, from Saturday, single adult households will be allowed to form a “support bubble” with one other household and stay the night, which some newspapers took as an end to what they had dubbed a sex ban. But some of the coronavirus customs that have taken root look set to persist.

Dating app Bumble is launching a feature where users can badge themselves about how they want to date, be it virtually or socially distanced with a mask.

 

(Compiled by Linda Noakes)