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Three meat processing plants in Montijo have 40 workers infected with Covid 19. The first cases were detected on Wednesday and the patients confirmed after the tests carried out in the companies had already been isolated.
However, the three companies continue to work and, in statements to SIC, the president of one of them, Raporal, where the vast majority of those infected will be, guarantees that the safety standards required by the General Directorate of Health are strictly adhered to. within companies.
Nuno Canta, mayor of Montijo, associates this growing number of cases with the fact that workers travel daily on public transport and warned that there was a large concentration of people at the same time. Especially since it is an area with several industries and many workers.
According to Nuno Canta, there are no signs of active transmission to the population.
There are 101 infected in Azambuja
In Azambuja, where the first Covid outbreak arose in these food industries, in this case Avipronto, the number of infected people increased to 101 workers. The company has been closed for a week, but two more positive cases were detected in a nearby factory and 26 inhabitants were infected, as confirmed by the General Directorate of Health.
The mayor of Azambuja, Luís Sousa, asks the government to increase the number of carriages so that there is a minimum space among the thousands of workers who commute to work daily. In total, in the industries of the region there are about 8 thousand workers in companies very close to each other, which increases the fear that the situation will skyrocket.
Taking into account the impact on the distribution of the food products in question, the government has already scheduled a meeting for Monday with officials from Jerónimo Martins and Sonae, to assess the need for possible preventive measures.
There are also cases out there
Meat processing plants have been shown to be a major source of contagion during the pandemic in several countries. In April, Texas health officials opened an investigation into a set of covid-19 cases that arose at a large meat-packing plant, operated by JBS USA, a subsidiary of the world’s largest meat-processing company, based in São Paulo, Brazil.
U.S. beef, pork, and poultry processing units in the United States are classified as dangerous sources of contagion. Dozens of factories have even been forced to temporarily halt operations in the face of the increasing number of employee deaths and cases. According to a report by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published this week by the American magazine “Wired”, almost 27,000 factory workers in 19 states in that country had tested positive for the virus on April 27. In the states of Iowa and South Dakota, nearly a fifth of the workforce fell ill.
Cases have also arisen in meat packaging factories in Canada, Spain, Australia, Ireland and Brazil. “These outbreaks are clearly a worldwide phenomenon,” Nicholas Christakis, head of the Human Nature Laboratory at Yale, told Wired. “For me, this is evidence that there is something different about meat packaging that increases people’s risk of capture of covid-19.”
According to the CDC report, the main risks to refrigerators stem from prolonged proximity among workers. Thousands of people can work a single eight-hour shift, standing side by side as the bodies pass through hooks or conveyor belts. “The hectic pace and physical demands of breaking dead animals can make it difficult for people to breathe and have difficulty keeping masks positioned correctly on their faces,” explains “Wired.” To allow for social distance, the agency recommended that meat processors slow down production lines to require fewer workers and alternate shifts to limit the number of employees in a facility at the same time.
Other features are more difficult to modify, such as very low temperatures and the aggressive ventilation systems necessary to prevent meat from spoiling or becoming contaminated.
In the United States, the consequences are already being felt. This week, nearly a fifth of “Wendy’s” chain restaurants ran out of burgers, the New York Times reported. And retail brands like Kroger and Costco are limiting the sale of fresh meat, poultry, and pork.
