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Thursday, May 07, 2020

Colorado meatpacking plant stopped testing workers after high coronavirus infection rate found among managers

The JBS meatpacking plant in Greeley, Colo., has the highest coronavirus infection total in the state, with at least 287 employees testing positive and seven dead of covid-19, Robert Garrison reports for KMGH-TV in Denver. But though the plant had the resources to test all of its employees, company officials only tested a fraction of them, Tony Kovaleski reports for the station.

State and county health directors shut down the plant for two weeks on April 10, the same day Vice President Mike Pence spoke about the plant at a briefing and vowed to provide testing resources. JBS said that day it would spend more than $1 million on testing kits, Kovaleski reports.

"Multiple informed sources confirmed . .. that JBS management stopped testing shortly after it started doing so on April 11 and well before its promise to test its 6,000 employees," Kovaleski reports. "Insiders [say] that between 40% and 80% of managers/supervisors tested positive on the initial day of testing and those results prompted JBS to end the testing program."

Sylvia Martinez, a spokesperson for Latinos Unidos of Greeley, told Kovaleski: "We can only assume the reason they stopped testing is they don't want the numbers to come out, it’s bad PR."

The plant reopened April 24, and most of its employees still haven't been tested, Natalia Navarro reports for Colorado Public Radio. A company spokesperson told CPR that, instead of testing all the employees, "The company took the more aggressive action to self-quarantine Greeley beef employees during the plant closure" and encouraged workers to shelter in place. The company said that all employees have received temperature checks before entering the building since April 2, but the union that represents the workers says that's not true.

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