Rachel P. Cullen, executive director of the company, said that, as with many companies, Ruiz’s initial response was to give employees the option of working at home and taking vacation or unpaid time off if their jobs couldn’t. be done remotely.
After Easter, however, the Tulare County case count skyrocketed, and the company aggressively moved to tackle the virus. The tests were mandatory for all employees, Cullen said in a statement, and “physical distance, mandatory use of masks, flexible barriers, symptom control and temperature detection, limitation of visitors and travel restriction”.
No employee has died from Covid-19, Cullen said, but the Dinuba plant became a hot spot and two workers were hospitalized. She said 331 employees have recovered from Covid-19 since April and that about 15 have active infections.
Ms. Ramírez suspects that she captured the virus in the company dining room, where tables are now cordoned off to enforce social distancing. On the production line where she works with hundreds of other people, she said, separate plastic sheeting for employees and bottles of hand sanitizer were placed on each catwalk. That was not the case before April, he said.
Still, she does not blame her employer. “Many of us did not believe in Covid at first,” he said in Spanish. “I didn’t, because I didn’t know anyone who had it until I got it myself.”
A week after her test results returned, her 20-year-old daughter, Cynthia Orozco, also tested positive. Because her daughter also cares for Ms. Ramírez’s two youngest children, ages 2 and 10, the doctor told Ms. Ramírez to assume they also had the virus.
