Prisoners working in meatpacking plants may have spread the coronavirus between those two risky settings

Many meatpackers hire prisoners in work-release programs. Prisons and slaughterhouses have been two of the highest-risk settings during the pandemic, and such workers may have spread the coronavirus from one facility to another, reports the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting.

"Nearly 400,000 prisoners in the U.S. have contracted coronavirus and about 2,700 have died, according to the Marshall Project. Investigate Midwest tracking has found that at least 50,000 meatpacking workers have gotten sick since March and 259 have died," Madison McVan reports. "It is unclear how widespread the connection between Covid-19 cases in jails and meatpacking plants might have been. Some work release programs were suspended early in the pandemic . . . but isolated incidents were reported across the country."

It's often difficult to prove a cause, but a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study from April "determined incarcerated workers at two Idaho food processing plants — CTI Foods and CS Beef — contracted Covid-19 at work and carried the virus to the correctional facilities where they lived," McVan reports. The Idaho Department of Corrections barred prisoners from working at CTI until after the pandemic because the plant didn't follow the department's required safety standards. 

"The CDC study described how collaboration among Idaho departments resulted in more testing availability, reassignment to safer worksites and a shared pool of information," McVan reports. 

Bruce Wells-Moore, deputy chief of Idaho's probation and parole division, told McVan, "We had to go and say, 'We want to continue to work with you. But if you can’t impose and implement these protective measures — masks, social distancing — we aren’t going to be able to send our folks to do your work. I know that we’re small, and we’re rural in many ways . . . but if this can help establish a pattern or a process for other states to follow, I think that’s brilliant and I want to be part of that."