Meatpacker Smithfield Foods Becomes Largest COVID-19 Hotspot In US With 518 Employees Testing Positive

Meatpacking company Smithfield Foods has reportedly become the nation’s largest hotspot for the coronavirus, where 518 employees have tested positive for COVID-19.

According to the Argus Leader, a team from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has arrived at the company’s Sioux Falls, South Dakota plant, which has been closed indefinitely, to evaluate what needs to be done at the plant before it reopens. The Sioux Falls plant reportedly employs about 3,700 workers.

Beyond the 518 Smithfield employees that have tested positive for COVID-19, a total of 126 non-employee cases have been connected to the plant, according to the South Dakota Department of Health (via Argus Leader).

With 644 total COVID-19 cases, the Smithfield plant is the largest cluster for the virus in the U.S., according to tracking by the New York Times. The second-largest cluster was aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt in Guam with 585 cases.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who has resisted issuing a stay-at-home order for South Dakota, said in a press conference that the state is “aggressively testing” Smithfield’s employees and anyone that has come in contact with these workers to get them in to quarantine as soon as possible.

Smithfield announced on Wednesday that it was closing its Cudahy, Wisconsin plant for two weeks, and its Martin City, Missouri, plant until further notice as this plant receives raw material from Sioux Falls. The company said a small number of employees from both these plants have tested positive for COVID-19.

“The closure of our Martin City plant is part of the domino effect underway in our industry,” Kenneth M. Sullivan, president and CEO at Smithfield, said in a statement. “It highlights the interdependence and interconnectivity of our food supply chain. Our country is blessed with abundant livestock supplies, but our processing facilities are the bottleneck of our food chain.

“Without plants like Sioux Falls running, other further processing facilities like Martin City cannot function. This is why our government has named food and agriculture critical infrastructure sectors and called on us to maintain operations and normal work schedules.

“For the security of our nation, I cannot understate how critical it is for our industry to continue to operate unabated,” he added.