EMAILS SHOW PUSH TO GET BV FOOD WORKERS BACK INTO THE PACK

Workers were pushed to get back to work after being in hospital

Appeals to state for testing go unanswered for 8 weeks

BY TOM CULLEN

Buena Vista Public Health and Home Care alerted the public to its first positive test for COVID-19 on April 6.

But the first case actually was detected March 20, according to three months of emails obtained by The Storm Lake Times among Tyson Foods and state and local authorities.

The pandemic that was enveloping the nation’s meatpacking plant communities finally reached Buena Vista County, home to three food processing plants where a combined 3,300 employees process eggs and slaughter thousands of hogs and turkeys each day.

But signs of the virus’ spread were popping up weeks before the first test registered with local health authorities.

Unnamed employees at Tyson Foods expressed concern to Buena Vista County Public Health Administrator Pam Bogue in early April that the company, in an attempt to backfill a swath of workers who called in sick, hired workers from New York state without testing them.

“These new employees are being relocated from the state of New York without any testing done to ensure the safety of current employees,” an unidentified Tyson employee wrote in an email correspondence to Bogue. “What action can be taken to keep my family members safe?”

Bogue replied three weeks later the company was “handling the situation appropriately.”

A correspondence between Bogue and Tyson Foods’ nursing staff shows the company’s daily absentee rates shot up in March, though neither party specified to what degree. Buena Vista Regional Medical Center was running out of testing supplies, which were used mainly for Tyson employees who showed up to the emergency room.

“I have heard stories of some at the pork plant that were sent home from the ER with a note asking them to quarantine, but show up at work,” with a doctor’s note, said Tyson Nurse Manager Norma Sanchez in an email to Bogue March 31.

In another correspondence on March 6, Bogue asked Iowa Department of Public Health Epidemiologist Nick Kalas if the company “has had several employees who were staying home for the 14 days” with notes from local physicians. Tyson asked BVRMC to release them for work; the hospital was uncomfortable with granting the company’s request.

“Could you advise me how to address this?” Bogue asked Kalas.

Neither Bogue nor Tyson Spokeswoman Liz Croston commented on the correspondence.

“Due to patient confidentiality, we do not discuss patient information,” said BVRMC Spokeswoman Katie Schwint, when asked about the apparent conflict between Tyson and hospital brass.

It’s unclear what decision resulted from the exchange.

Correspondence quoted in this story was obtained through a public records request that the non-profit newsroom ProPublica made to dozens of public health authorities across the nation. Buena Vista County wasn’t mentioned in the investigative outlet’s story that ran in Wednesday’s edition of The Storm Lake Times.

When the story’s lead author, ProPublica investigative reporter Michael Grabell, was asked about the email exchange between Kalas and Bogue, he replied it was a common problem among Tyson plants in Iowa.

CDC guidance for workers on leave was ever-changing, Grabell said. Initially, the CDC recommended a two-week quarantine but amended that guidance several times, eventually saying that asymptomatic workers with a potential exposure could go back to work immediately but should monitor their symptoms. Kalas told the same thing to Bogue:

“(A) meat packer who lives with a positive case can work during their 14-day isolation as long as they aren’t sick and wear a mask,” Kalas wrote to Bogue. “If it helps, you can tell an exposed meat packer’s employer that they have been exposed to a positive case (you wouldn’t have to say the positives name)…”

State and local public health authorities tasked with monitoring the virus’s spread were uncertain about their powers to rein in meatpacking plants and their abilities to alert the public about positive cases. The county’s first positive test was reported March 20, according to the state’s coronavirus monitoring website, though county public health didn’t alert the public of the infection until April 6.

As case reports exploded in late May, an apparent snafu in reporting emerged among the county, Tyson and the Iowa Department of Public Health. Bogue wasn’t being notified about the number of positive tests in the county, by either Tyson or the Iowa Department of Public Health.

A resolution to the problem wasn’t found in the email chain. As The Times’ publication deadline emerged May 28, it wasn’t immediately clear whether the 555 cases Deputy Director Sarah Reisetter announced at Gov. Kim Reynolds’ press conference were at the Storm Lake Tyson pork plant were included in the 700 cases the county already reported.

BV PUBLIC HEALTH, which only employs a staff of 12, erred on the side of cooperation with the companies, the emails show.

Working with the employers proved to be the easiest way to bring about safer plant environments amid a growing chaos wrought by an rash of symptomatic employees without a robust testing apparatus.

The public health agency and the Buena Vista County Communications Center showed signs of stress when case reports neared 70. An email chain that spanned for days showed a joint effort between the employers, public health and the Buena Vista County Sheriff’s Office to track down a possible exposure.

“We gave up our doing follow-up investigations last Wednesday at midnight,” Bogue wrote in an email dated May 18. “We are still collecting names and addresses of positives for the Comm Center and also checking to see if they work at Tyson.”

BOGUE WAS FRUSTRATED with the fact the state wouldn’t extend help to its major employers, or allow the $26 million TestIowa program to be used for the community at large, her correspondence shows.

“The state will probably not do targeted testing here unless we have a large number of positive cases,” Bogue said in an April 29 email to Board of Health Member Rhonda Ringgenberg, who’s also the chairwoman of the Buena Vista County Board of Supervisors. “Even though I have tried to stay optimistic about not having a lot of cases at any of our meatpackers or long-term care facilities, we all knew it was probably a matter of time.”

The Iowa Department of Public Health and Governor’s Spokesman Pat Garrett didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment. The emails show the TestIowa site was finally placed in Storm Lake on May 16 after a bevy of WebMD referrals. That was eight weeks after the first reported case of the virus here.

Tyson said that it sought an expanded testing apparatus in discussions with the state through BVRMC and Buena Vista County Public Health. If the state would’ve signed off on the arrangement, testing would’ve arrived weeks prior to company-wide testing in late May.

The situation didn’t fit the state’s criteria.

The company also denies asking quarantined team members to return to work.

“Tyson created a coronavirus task force in January and from early on we have implemented numerous precautions consistent with CDC and OSHA guidance for preventing COVID-19,” said Croston in a statement to The Times Thursday morning. The precautions included travel restrictions and hiring in the area.

AS OF THURSDAY MORNING, 1,620 county residents, or 8.2% of the population, has tested positive for novel coronavirus. Ten people have died. The county accounts for 11% of the state’s hospitalizations, or 21. Last weekend, the county registered the fastest growth rate of COVID-19 in the nation, per a live analysis by The New York Times.

The local hospital admitted 71 COVID patients since May 1. The hospital declined to provide daily admission data to The Storm Lake Times.

The pork industry is back to running at over 95% capacity, but it is not known how many workers are sick.