Dozens of employees of a Morgan Hill seafood distribution company have tested positive for COVID-19 in recent days, according to Santa Clara County public health officials.
Thirty-eight employees of Lusamerica Foods have tested positive for the illness, county Public Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody told the Board of Supervisors’ Health and Hospital Committee this morning.
The local outbreak started at least two weeks earlier, officials said. A Lusamerica employee’s spouse had been hospitalized with COVID-19, Cody explained. The Lusamerica worker was subsequently tested for the disease; results came back positive.
The employee then informed management at Lusamerica Foods. “Their employer took responsibility for notifying contacts of that employee within the company, putting them on quarantine and ensuring they got tested,” Cody explained.
The employer worked with county staff to make sure every employee at Lusamerica’s Morgan Hill facility was tested for COVD-19. So far, 38 tests have come back positive. Cody said more testing is planned at the company on Wednesday.
Cody said health officials just learned of this “cluster” of COVID-19 cases when the initial test results of Lusamerica employees were reported to the county early this week.
Lusamerica COO Louise Moretti declined to answer questions about the coronavirus cases at the Morgan Hill facility. The company sent out a statement detailing the precautions Lusamerica is taking to prevent spreading the illness further.
“We recently experienced cases of COVID-19 at one of our facilities and have partnered with the County of Santa Clara to minimize any risk to our employees and the community,” the statement reads. “We are committed to providing a safe working environment for our entire team, while continuing to serve our customers with the high quality and service they have come to expect.”
Lusamerica’s statement added that county staff inspected its Morgan Hill facilities for sanitation and prevention measures, and received positive feedback.
The statement added that all employees who have tested positive are staying at home, though the majority are not showing symptoms.
All employees who tested negative will be reassessed, Lusamerica officials promised. The company said it has closed areas where social distancing is difficult, such as the cafeteria and locker rooms. Face masks are mandatory at the company, and body temperature checks are performed on everyone entering the Lusamerica facility, the statement says.
“We have expanded our processing and distribution capacity at our other locations and will continue to provide safe, high quality product to meet the demand of our customers,” Lusamerica assured in its statement to reporters. “Our facilities are sanitized continuously throughout the day and at the end of each shift.”
Lusamerica also owns facilities in Fife, Washington, and Vernon, California.
Cody added that the notification of the initial COVID-19 case at Lusmerica and subsequent identification of more positive cases within the company is a good example of “how our containment strategy is working, and [how[ our cooperation with businesses in the region is working.”
The county health department’s COVID-19 data dashboard shows that, as of today, 63 cases have been reported in Morgan Hill. That’s a significant jump from the previous week, when the number of confirmed cases in the city was less than 50.
Take good care of nursing home Top priority . They really need special concern .
> is a good example of “how our containment strategy is working, and [how[ our cooperation with businesses in the region is working.”
Or, maybe your “containment strategy” didn’t really have that much to do with it, and the reality is that coronavirus isn’t as contagious as the “experts” have been warning.
My containment strategy is to let 95 degree sunny hot weather just kill off the damn virus.
No masks. No “social distancing”. Just heat soaking in the sunshine.
They say they are sanitizing several times per day, yet check employee temperatures only once, at the beginning of the shift. HUH?
No comment from anyone about whether COVID can be passed on by a food handler to the food and thus to the consumer. That’s kinda important to know in evaluating risk. Nobody asks important follow up questions any more. It’s just keep the panic alive as justification for strangling our liberties.
At the end of the day, few liberal mainstream media or blogs run by liberals note the fact that 98+% of people who test positive for COVID recover with no professional medical intervention. Conversely, anyone who dies from whatever cause—cancer, auto oaccident, heart disease, etc.—is listed as a COVID death, based on orders from Birx and the CDC, which they follow like rats following the Pied Piper. They are inflating the numbers to keep the panic alive. Yet the liberal mainstream media keep making the unsubstantiated assertion that the reported numbers are too low; once again to keep the panic alive.
The Founding Fathers envisioned a free press as a bulwark against a tyrranical government. The liberal press now just parrots the party line, and eliminates all facts which don’t conform.
The media on the right are equal distorters of the truth, only reporting what fits their narrative. Take as gospel nothing reported in the media. Do your own follow up, because none of them can be trusted to be impartial.
> The media on the right are equal distorters of the truth, only reporting what fits their narrative.
NOT equal. Different.
The “left” distorts to get power. Defeating Trump is the road to power.
Both the “left” and the “reight” distort to get clicks.
What the media and leftists keep leaving out is the 80k that were infected from October to December. The deaths that occurred were counted as influenza a/b which had been predicted to be very deadly this year. Do we see any numbers on this influenza deaths since December. We were averaging 1,200 nation wide. How did this virus suddenly stop.
Lusamaerica enokoyees stay strong as most of us will sill get it later this year and next. We will all forget about this in November when the landslide win occurs.
Californian population is 41 million not counting the approximate 10 million undocumented trespassers. As of today 3,750 deaths potentially related to covid. Isn’t that .0009 percent death ratio. And, we stopped the economy for why, it’s backfired and moderates are not voting for the new diabolical party that destroys at all cost.