ALMOST 400 workers tested positive for the deadly coronavirus at one Missouri meat-packing plant as Costco begins restricting poultry, pork and beef purchases.
The asymptomatic infected workers at the Triumph Foods facility in St Josephs tested positive on Sunday, after the local health department carried out COVID-19 tests on over 2,200 employees.
The news comes as Costco began rationing meat this week as the country prepares for a historic low with meat supplies and grocery stores prepare for shortages.
On Sunday, around 373 Triumph employees and contract workers at the factory received the damning diagnosis even though they had presented with no symptoms, health officials revealed.
“We continue to work this weekend contacting these asymptomatic patients and have initiated the process of contact tracing with those determined to be close contacts of our positive cases,” said Director of DHSS Dr. Randall Williams.
“Being swabbed wasn’t much fun, yet the test results will be critical to helping us understand where the coronavirus is in our facility and our communities,” added CEO of Triumph Foods Mark Campbell.
Around 17 percent of the people tested were positive for the deadly bug which has infected multiple meat factories across the country.
The crisis has cut beef slaughter capacity 10 percent and pork slaughter capacity by 25 percent as it ravages processing plants.
As a result, Costco customers will be limited to three meat items per member after Kroger Co issued restricted ground beef and fresh pork purchases at some stores.
From Monday, Costco also requires all shoppers to don masks and face coverings to stop the spread in its various facilities.
The ramped up measures come after John Tyson, chairman of the largest meat processing company in the US, Tyson Foods Inc, said last week the food supply chain was “breaking.”
Tyson warned that millions of pounds of meat would vanish from grocery stores as a result of the pandemic.
In response to the ongoing crisis, Donald Trump mandated that all meat processing plants should remain open to protect the industry.
But his decision prompted backlash from some union members who say it puts workers at risk.
Around 1.3 million food workers are represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, who claim that 20 factory workers have died from the deadly bug.
Various meat plants in South Dakota, Sioux Falls, Arkansas, and Minnesota are implementing tentative reopening, or limited production strategies, this week in an effort to keep meat supplies going.
Smithfield, based in Virginia, is offering testing to workers and there families from Monday, according to a text alert obtained by the Associated Press.
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Last week, Trump deemed meat-packing plants to be essential work in an executive order which described the work as “critical infrastructure.”
But one anonymous Tyson employee in Amarillo, Texas, argued that the president was prioritizing profit over the lives of her co-workers in a blistering Medium post, describing how she felt “sacrificial.”
“He says we’re part of critical infrastructure, that we’re essential workers. Well, I don’t feel critical. I don’t essential,” she wrote. “This is about money.”
