The Arkansas Department of Health (ADH) reports that 105 poultry workers in Arkansas have been hospitalized with Covid-19 and 11 have died.
The information was released to the Eureka Springs Independent June 30 at noon after an earlier request for that information was denied. ADH Public Information Director Gavin Lesnick said in a phone call that they were able to figure out a way to release the information without compromising patient privacy laws.
Laura Ponce, a community activist who worked for two weeks to get the deaths of two Berryville Tyson workers recorded on the ADH Covid-19 figures for Carroll County, said it is important to know how many workers are dying.
“People have the right to know where there are outbreaks to prevent spreading it to their loved ones,” Ponce said. “We are demanding the right to know. I notice some people are trying to minimize the danger of Covid-19, questioning if the statistics are designed to make people panic. I think that is because they haven’t had a case in their family. My sister in Mexico is dying from Covid-19, so I know that it’s real. I’m trying my very best to keep my loved ones safe.”
Magaly Licolli, an organizer with the Northwest Arkansas poultry workers’ rights group Venceremos, said the public deserves to know how many workers have been dying in order to hold these companies accountable.
“There is not transparency on the number of deaths,” she said. “We don’t know how many people are dying at each plant.”
Licolli was critical of the ADH poultry cluster reports that don’t include fatality data.
“I don’t think the cluster report makes that information clear,” she said.
For Carroll County, the June 28 poultry cluster report states there are a total of 49 cases with 13 active and 36 recovered. The two deaths are apparently not included in the total number of cases for the county. The report showed Tyson, Green Forest, with ten active cases, 21 recovered and a total of 31. The Tyson facility in Berryville was no longer on the list of poultry plants with at least five active cases. In mid-June the ADH report showed Tyson in Berryville with five active cases, five recovered cases and a total of 10 cases.
On June 12, ADH showed Carroll County had a total of 56 cases of Covid-19 with one death. On June 29, ADH reported the number of cases had tripled to 169 with five deaths.
Licolli said the deaths of poultry workers is concerning, particularly in light of what she sees as the failure of the government to protect the workers, the families of workers and the communities where workers live.
At a press conference June 1, Gov. Asa Hutchinson praised steps taken by Tyson and other poultry processors in the region. Hutchinson said Tyson has set a national model for best practices in the industry. Tyson, headquartered in Springdale, is one of the larger meat packing companies in the country.
Tyson Food did not reply to a request for comments prior to the deadline. The company has stated that most employees across the country testing positive for Covid-19 did not have symptoms.
Tom Super, a spokesman for the National Chicken Council, told the Eureka Springs Independent that poultry companies are doing everything possible to prevent the spread of Covid-19 including providing personal protection equipment to workers, requiring social distancing, taking employees’ temperatures, putting barriers between work stations, and doing “sanitation on steroids.”
There doesn’t appear to be any nationwide tracking system for deaths in meatpacking plant workers. A June 8 article in the Washington Post said 60 meatpacking workers had died nationwide, and that there were 7,000 Covid-19 cases at Tyson facilities alone. Food & Environment Reporting Network’s Leah Douglas reported June 9 that at least 24,715 meatpacking workers in the U.S. have been infected with Covid-19 and at least 86 have died.
Mother Jones magazine has reported that the U.S. has the worst outbreaks of Covid-19 in meat processing plants in the world because of their larger size and faster line speeds than in other countries.
“Because these companies still want the same production volumes, they are really not wanting to protect the workers,” Licolli said.
She also advocates full pay and providing a place for workers to quarantine without infecting their families.
“It is not only that the poultry workers are dying, but that they are bringing the virus home and infecting the whole family,” Licolli said. “A lot of family members of poultry workers have gotten sick, and many are hospitalized or dying. Some workers who are asymptomatic infected other family members in higher risk categories.”
Northwest Arkansas had relatively few Covid-19 cases until June when hundreds of workers tested positive for Covid-19 at poultry plants. An ADH occupation poultry cluster report June 28 indicated a total of 2,611 Covid-19 cases in poultry businesses in ten counties. The report indicated 806 active cases and 1,805 recovered cases with about 53 percent of those cases being in Hispanics.
ADH data on the outbreak in poultry facilities shows Washington County with a total of 889 cases, and Benton County with 715 cases
The AP has reported that meat processing plants have become hot spots for Covid-19 infections in communities across the country, but most have stayed open since President Donald Trump signed an executive order a month ago declaring the plants critical infrastructure during the pandemic.
In late June going into early July, Arkansas is seeing record numbers of new Covid-19 cases mirroring a trend being seen nationally and in a number of other states that have reopened including Texas, Florida and Arizona.
The U.S. has the highest count of Covid-19 cases in the world, more than 2.6 million, and the largest number of deaths, 128,103.