COVID-19 at a Nebraska Meat Processing Plant, 2020: 31% of Workers Tested Positive

COVID-19 spread among meat processing workers across the United States early in the pandemic. In late April 2020, a Nebraska plant, working with the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services, invited its workers — by flyer and text message — to free on-site testing for SARS-CoV-2.

Results

• 1,216 Nebraska-resident workers were tested by RT-PCR; 375 (31%) were positive.
• From May 8 to 25, investigators tried to interview the 349 positive workers with phone numbers; 241 (69%) gave usable interviews.

Among those with symptoms, the most common were headache (106), fatigue (85), fever and muscle aches (82 each) and loss of taste or smell (77); the median illness lasted 11 days.

Where exposure happened

At work

• 70 (29%) reported close contact — within 6 feet for 10 minutes or more — with a visibly ill person or someone diagnosed with COVID-19. The contact happened mostly in production areas (74%) and cafeterias or break areas (51%).
• Of 167 who had worked in the two weeks before, 46% worked on the conveyor line — in harvesting (stunning, slaughtering, eviscerating, halving), processing (cutting, preparing, packaging) or rendering (turning animal waste into usable products) — less than 4 feet (1.5 m) from others.

At the door: 87% said their temperature was always checked on arrival, but only 41% were always asked about symptoms. 73% had a flexible sick-leave policy.

Outside work, risk factors were less common: 88% drove themselves rather than carpooling (11%), about half lived in a single-family home (median household of three), and 30 of 235 (13%) reported close contact with an ill person outside work.

What it means

• Fever checks aren't enough. Despite fever screening and flexible leave, many workers had contact with ill coworkers — so plants should also screen for symptoms (such as cough, shortness of breath, headache, fatigue, muscle aches, loss of smell or taste, sore throat) and keep testing available.
• A third had no symptoms at all, and people without symptoms can spread the virus — another limit of symptom and fever screening alone.
• Crowding drives spread. With nearly half working shoulder to shoulder, plants need physical barriers, distancing throughout — especially on production floors and in cafeterias and break rooms — and consistent, correct mask use.

Limits: there was no comparison group, and only workers who were tested, positive, reachable and willing to talk are included.

Sources

Based on Matthew Donahue, Nandini Sreenivasan, Derry Stover, Anu Rajasingham, Joanna Watson, Andreea Bealle, Natasha Ritchison, Thomas Safranek, Michelle A. Waltenburg, Bryan Buss and Jennita Reefhuis, "Notes from the Field: Characteristics of Meat Processing Facility Workers with Confirmed SARS-CoV-2 Infection — Nebraska, April–May 2020," MMWR, volume 69, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; a work of the United States government in the public domain.