Nearly 900 employees, 40 percent of the workforce, at a Tyson Foods pork-processing plant in Indiana have tested positive for the coronavirus.
The plant in Logansport halted operations April 25, one of several Tyson plants across the country that have voluntarily closed in an effort to help contain the spread of the virus.
The Cass County Health Department’s administrator, Serenity Alter, said 890 employees at the plant have tested positive so far, and that a couple of hundred of others still need to be screened.
Hli Yang, a spokeswoman for the company, said the Logansport plant employs 2,200 people. She declined to confirm the number who have tested positive for the virus.
“Since this is an ever-changing situation, we are not disclosing the number of confirmed cases associated with a plant,” she told NBC News.
Yang said Tyson plans to resume limited production at the Logansport facility next week, following a plant tour with local health and government officials, a union representative and medical professionals. Tyson made the announcement in a joint statement with the city, county health department and local officials.
“We’ve worked closely with Cass County officials, Cass County health department officials, the mayor of Logansport and the local union chapter on a re-opening plan that we all believe will be safe for team members,” Yang said. “During the plant tour, we showed them the additional protective measures implemented including more work station barriers, additional hand sanitizer dispensers, barriers in common areas to promote social distancing and more.”
Over the weekend, the chairman of Tyson Foods warned that the “U.S. food supply chain is breaking.”
“As pork, beef and chicken plants are being forced to close, even for short periods of time, millions of pounds of meat will disappear from the supply chain,” he wrote in a statement posted on the company’s website. “As a result, there will be limited supply of our products available in grocery stores until we are able to reopen our facilities that are currently closed.”
