CORONAVIRUS IN TEXAS
More than 700 new cases of coronavirus reported after testing at meatpacking plants in Amarillo region
BY JUAN PABLO GARNHAM MAY 16, 2020
More than 700 new coronavirus cases were reported in the Amarillo region Saturday, as results from targeted testing at meatpacking plants came in.
According to the office of the governor, a surge response team was deployed in Amarillo on May 4 to survey high-risk locations and test workers at meatpacking plants. The Texas Panhandle, where a workforce of Hispanics and immigrants power several meatpacking plants, is home to the highest rates of infection in the state.
"As Texas continues ramping up its testing capabilities, there will be an increase in positive cases as the state targets the most high-risk areas: nursing homes, meatpacking plants and jails," Gov. Greg Abbott said in a statement. "By immediately deploying resources and supplies to these high risk areas, we will identify the positive cases, isolate the individuals and ensure any outbreak is quickly contained."
In a press release Saturday, the governor’s office indicated plants with widespread outbreaks have temporarily shut down for thorough disinfection.
At a Tyson Foods plant just outside of Amarillo, all 3,587 employees were tested, according to High Plains Public Radio. The plant is “undergoing additional sanitation and cleaning” during the weekend and plans to operate on Monday, according to the company.
The Amarillo region includes two counties. Potter County reported 618 new cases on Saturday bringing its total to 2,080, while Randall County reported 116 new cases for a total of 593. Moore County, which has the highest rate of cases per 1,000 residents in Texas and is north of Amarillo, added 4 new cases on Saturday. In total, the three counties accounted for 738 of the 1,801 new cases reported on Saturday.
Across the country, the coronavirus has spread easily in meatpacking plants, where workers typically stand shoulder to shoulder on fast-moving butchering lines. More than a dozen have been forced to shut down temporarily after surges in infections and deaths tied to those facilities. The processing plants, including those in Texas, have scrambled to ramp up health and safety precautions, providing masks and eye protection to workers and placing plastic dividers in some areas.
In Moore County, a JBS Beef plant has seen several cases and one death. On Wednesday, the company reversed course and accepted the offer from the state to test employees in their facilities.
Workers at JBS and family members of JBS employees who have been infected previously told The Texas Tribune that plant management was slow to acknowledge when workers began testing positive, and those who come in contact with the sick are not always informed of their exposure.
Alexa Ura contributed to this report.
As of May 16, Texas reports at least 46,999 coronavirus cases
The Texas Department of State Health Services is tracking COVID-19 cases in Texas by county. The numbers are reported by local health officials and may not represent all cases of the disease given limited testing. The state numbers may lag behind other local news reports and cases that local health officials are disclosing.
11 county deaths connected to Resort at Texas City
Armstrong gained national attention by announcing he was treating 38 people at the facility with hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug once touted by some, including President Donald Trump, as an effective treatment for coronavirus.
Armstrong’s decision to treat some residents with the drug was controversial because some experts had questioned the safety of doing so.
Weeks after Armstrong administered the treatment to his residents, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued an official warning against medical providers using the drug as a COVID-19 treatment.
Armstrong is also a prominent Republican figure in Texas. He’s one of the state’s two members to the Republican National Committee and was able to get samples of hydroxychloroquine by contacting other prominent Republicans in the state, including Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, according to The Associated Press.
Armstrong said his decision to treat patients with hydroxychloroquine was in no way connected to his politics. On April 10, Armstrong wrote an op-ed for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram praising Trump’s response to the pandemic and said he was encouraged by the government’s support of using off-label drugs.
After the reports of the deaths Thursday, he said he stands by his use of the drug.
11 county deaths connected to Resort at Texas City
By JOHN WAYNE FERGUSON The Daily News May 14, 2020 1
TEXAS CITY
More than a third of all local COVID-19-related deaths are connected to The Resort at Texas City, a long-term care facility where the single largest identified outbreak of the virus in Galveston County occurred.
Of at least 56 residents infected with the virus, 11 died, spokeswoman Cara Gustafson said.
Three of the people who died were among a group treated with the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine, said Dr. Robin Armstrong, the medical director for the facility.
The 11 deaths connected to the facility were first reported by the Houston Chronicle.
The information about the deaths added more context to the death toll wrought by COVID-19 in Galveston County. The health district has reported that 27 of the county’s 30 COVID-19-related deaths were connected to long-term care facilities but so far has declined to say in which facilities, or even which cities, the deaths have occurred.
Nationwide, long-term care facilities for older adults have been the source of 153,000 COVID-19 infections. Those infections contributed to the deaths of at least 28,100 people as of Monday, according to The New York Times. Nursing home-related deaths accounted for 35 percent of all the COVID-19-related deaths in the United States as of Monday, according to the Times.
Of the people who died at The Resort in Texas City, five were in hospice care, Gustafson said. Four people died at the facility, and one died in a hospital, she said.
Another four residents died at local hospitals after being moved from the facility. Two people, who were not in hospice care, died at the facility, Gustafson said.
NATIONAL ATTENTION
The Resort at Texas City has been the focus of nationwide attention since the health district on April 3 announced more than 60 people, including staff members and residents, were diagnosed with COVID-19. That number later was increased to 83 after more people connected to the facility were tested following the identification of the outbreak.
The number of deaths reported at the facility was not necessarily indicative of the care patients at the facility received after the outbreak was announced, Armstrong said.
“There were hospice patients that had been on hospice for months prior,” Armstrong said. “And there were also some that went out before we took over the facility,” referring to safety steps taken after the announcement of the outbreak.
One of the people who died had tested negative for COVID-19 at The Resort but later went to the hospital and tested positive before dying, Armstrong said.
“Almost half of those deaths were hospice patients who had underlying medical conditions,” Armstrong said. “We weren’t taking care of all the patients at the facility; some of them were under the care of other physicians.”
Armstrong gained national attention by announcing he was treating 38 people at the facility with hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug once touted by some, including President Donald Trump, as an effective treatment for coronavirus.
Armstrong’s decision to treat some residents with the drug was controversial because some experts had questioned the safety of doing so.
Weeks after Armstrong administered the treatment to his residents, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued an official warning against medical providers using the drug as a COVID-19 treatment.
Armstrong is also a prominent Republican figure in Texas. He’s one of the state’s two members to the Republican National Committee and was able to get samples of hydroxychloroquine by contacting other prominent Republicans in the state, including Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, according to The Associated Press.
Armstrong said his decision to treat patients with hydroxychloroquine was in no way connected to his politics. On April 10, Armstrong wrote an op-ed for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram praising Trump’s response to the pandemic and said he was encouraged by the government’s support of using off-label drugs.
After the reports of the deaths Thursday, he said he stands by his use of the drug.
“I don’t think criticism would be valid,” Armstrong said. “I think it actually helps bolster the argument that medication was effective in preventing others from dying. Out of the cohort we treated, the results were favorable.”
John Wayne Ferguson: 409-683-5226; john.ferguson@galvnews.com or on Twitter @johnwferguson.
SATURDAY, MAY 9, 2020
Covid-19 Mortality, Crunching the Numbers, Children, The Jungle 1906 to 2020
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 29, 2020
President Donald J. Trump signed an Executive Order to keep meat and poultry processing facilities open during the COVID-19 national emergency
MONDAY, APRIL 27, 2020
Noem releases finalized CDC report pertaining to Smithfield Foods
Business
USDA Inspector Reportedly Dies Amid Meat-Plant Viral Outbreaks
By Deena Shanker and Lydia Mulvany
April 23, 2020, 2:14 PM CDT
Agency reported death during a call, two participants say Another inspector died in March, a union official says
An inspector from the U.S. Department of Agriculture has died after apparently contracting Covid-19, according to information the federal agency provided Thursday during a phone call with consumer groups.
The USDA didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Two participants on the call corroborated that the death was disclosed on the call.
“If USDA had acted more quickly to ensure worker safety, they could have prevented the disease from spreading across the meat industry as it has,” says Sarah Sorscher of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, who was on the call. “Instead, we have massive shutdowns and worker deaths. All that delay and lack of action is going to make it much harder to bring these outbreaks under control.”
As meat processing plants become hotbeds of virus outbreaks, inspectors are finding themselves at higher risk and increasingly getting sick themselves. There are about 6,500 inspectors across the country working for the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service. One hundred have tested positive for the virus.
Paula Schelling, the acting national joint council chairwoman of food-inspector locals for the American Federation of Government Employees, who wasn’t on the agency call, said she also heard of the death on Thursday. She said that the worker was in Chicago and his wife is now in intensive care. Another inspector died in New York in March, she said.
“It makes my heart sad,” she said.
SATURDAY, APRIL 18, 2020
Coronavirus at Smithfield pork plant: The untold story of America's biggest outbreak
WHAT ABOUT THOSE POOR EMPLOYEES ???
***> However, plant management reported that there were approximately 40 different languages spoken by employees in the plant and that English, Spanish, Kunama, Swahili, Nepali, Tigrinya, Amharic, French, Oromo, and Vietnamese are the top 10 languages. We were also unable to obtain information about the workstations of confirmed positive cases.
Date: April 22, 2020
From: Michael Grant, CDC National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health Colin Basler, CDC National Center for Emerging Zoonotic Infectious Diseases Jesica Jacobs, CDC Laboratory Leadership Service Officer Erin Kennedy, CDC Center for Global Health John Osburn, South Dakota Department of Health Jonathan Steinberg, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Officer, South Dakota Department of Health Suzanne Tomasi, CDC National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
To: Joshua Clayton, South Dakota Department of Health Copy: Russ Dokken, Smithfield Foods Scott Reed, Smithfield Foods Mark Wiggs, Smithfield Foods B.J. Motley, President, UFCW Local 304A Union
Subject: Strategies to reduce COVID-19 transmission at the Smithfield Foods Sioux Falls Pork Plant
Background
The South Dakota Department of Health requested an Epi Aid for assistance in developing strategies to help reduce SARS-CoV-2 infections among Smithfield Foods Sioux Falls pork processing plant employees. SARS-CoV-2 is the virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). A team from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) traveled to Sioux Falls, South Dakota for an Epi Aid on April 14, 2020. The CDC team included veterinary epidemiologists, an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer, an industrial hygienist, and a Laboratory Leadership Service Officer. One component of this effort was to visit the Smithfield Foods pork processing plant to evaluate existing health and safety controls and provide recommendations for improvement. This memorandum provides observations and recommendations based on our visits to the plant on April 16 and 17, 2020 and conversations with plant management and the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) local president. The recommendations in this memorandum are steps that Smithfield Foods may want to consider implementing to address the conditions we identified at the plant. These recommendations are discretionary and not required or mandated by CDC.
No harvesting or further production work were taking place in the plant while we were on site. The first case among employees was detected on March 24, 2020. Smithfield Foods announced that the process to halt production began on April 11, 2020. The plant informed us that all processing activities were Page 2 of 15 completed on April 14, 2020 and that the plant would be shut down indefinitely while Smithfield Foods continued extensive sanitation and modification efforts in the plant. The few employees we observed in the plant during our walkthroughs were performing maintenance and distribution center tasks. We toured the plant and observed workstations from the pens where the swine are delivered through the distribution center, where product is shipped out of the plant. We also observed the route that employees take from the parking lots through the symptom screening tents and into the facility. Additionally, we observed administrative areas, the occupational health clinic and quarantine room, and the common areas (e.g., break rooms, cafeterias, locker rooms) shared by employees.
Our team was unable to identify important demographic information about this workforce, limiting our ability to understand the diversity of the employees. However, plant management reported that there were approximately 40 different languages spoken by employees in the plant and that English, Spanish, Kunama, Swahili, Nepali, Tigrinya, Amharic, French, Oromo, and Vietnamese are the top 10 languages. We were also unable to obtain information about the workstations of confirmed positive cases. This type of information could provide a better understanding of what workplace factors may have contributed to the spread of COVID-19 among employees. Key demographic and workstation information was requested from the company to help answer some of these questions in the future. Additional recommendations and findings may be provided upon receipt of demographic and workstation information.
Observations and Discussion
Employee Screening
snip...
EDITORIAL| VOLUME 395, ISSUE 10236, P1521, MAY 16, 2020
Reviving the US CDC
The Lancet
Published:May 16, 2020DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)31140-5
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to worsen in the USA with 1·3 million cases and an estimated death toll of 80 684 as of May 12. States that were initially the hardest hit, such as New York and New Jersey, have decelerated the rate of infections and deaths after the implementation of 2 months of lockdown. However, the emergence of new outbreaks in Minnesota, where the stay-at-home order is set to lift in mid-May, and Iowa, which did not enact any restrictions on movement or commerce, has prompted pointed new questions about the inconsistent and incoherent national response to the COVID-19 crisis.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the flagship agency for the nation's public health, has seen its role minimised and become an ineffective and nominal adviser in the response to contain the spread of the virus. The strained relationship between the CDC and the federal government was further laid bare when, according to The Washington Post, Deborah Birx, the head of the US COVID-19 Task Force and a former director of the CDC's Global HIV/AIDS Division, cast doubt on the CDC's COVID-19 mortality and case data by reportedly saying: “There is nothing from the CDC that I can trust”. This is an unhelpful statement, but also a shocking indictment of an agency that was once regarded as the gold standard for global disease detection and control. How did an agency that was the first point of contact for many national health authorities facing a public health threat become so ill-prepared to protect the public's health?
• View related content for this article
In the decades following its founding in 1946, the CDC became a national pillar of public health and globally respected. It trained cadres of applied epidemiologists to be deployed in the USA and abroad. CDC scientists have helped to discover new viruses and develop accurate tests for them. CDC support was instrumental in helping WHO to eradicate smallpox. However, funding to the CDC for a long time has been subject to conservative politics that have increasingly eroded the agency's ability to mount effective, evidence-based public health responses. In the 1980s, the Reagan administration resisted providing the sufficient budget that the CDC needed to fight the HIV/AIDS crisis. The George W Bush administration put restrictions on global and domestic HIV prevention and reproductive health programming.
The Trump administration further chipped away at the CDC's capacity to combat infectious diseases. CDC staff in China were cut back with the last remaining CDC officer recalled home from the China CDC in July, 2019, leaving an intelligence vacuum when COVID-19 began to emerge. In a press conference on Feb 25, Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, warned US citizens to prepare for major disruptions to movement and everyday life. Messonnier subsequently no longer appeared at White House briefings on COVID-19. More recently, the Trump administration has questioned guidelines that the CDC has provided. These actions have undermined the CDC's leadership and its work during the COVID-19 pandemic.
There is no doubt that the CDC has made mistakes, especially on testing in the early stages of the pandemic. The agency was so convinced that it had contained the virus that it retained control of all diagnostic testing for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, but this was followed by the admission on Feb 12 that the CDC had developed faulty test kits. The USA is still nowhere near able to provide the basic surveillance or laboratory testing infrastructure needed to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.
But punishing the agency by marginalising and hobbling it is not the solution. The Administration is obsessed with magic bullets—vaccines, new medicines, or a hope that the virus will simply disappear. But only a steadfast reliance on basic public health principles, like test, trace, and isolate, will see the emergency brought to an end, and this requires an effective national public health agency. The CDC needs a director who can provide leadership without the threat of being silenced and who has the technical capacity to lead today's complicated effort.
The Trump administration's further erosion of the CDC will harm global cooperation in science and public health, as it is trying to do by defunding WHO. A strong CDC is needed to respond to public health threats, both domestic and international, and to help prevent the next inevitable pandemic. Americans must put a president in the White House come January, 2021, who will understand that public health should not be guided by partisan politics.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31140-5/fulltext
We’re going to win so much, you’re going to be so sick and tired of winning, you’re going to come to me and go ‘Please, please, we can’t win anymore.’ You’ve heard this one. You’ll say ‘Please, Mr. President, we beg you sir, we don’t want to win anymore. It’s too much. It’s not fair to everybody else.’” Trump said.
Trump gop maga, party of death, “get back to work now” like leading sheep to slaughter imo...tss
Texas Confirmed 45,198 +1,801
Recovered 25,454
Deaths 1,272 +33
