Nearly 10% Of US Meat Industry Workers Tested Positive For COVID-19 - CDC

Sumaira FH Published July 08, 2020 | 12:50 AM

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 08th July, 2020) The US meat and poultry industry faces a growing threat from the COVID-19 pandemic with the virus already infecting about 9 percent of the workforce, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Tuesday.

"Among 14 states reporting the total number of workers in affected meat and poultry processing facilities, COVID-19 was diagnosed in 9.1 percent of workers," the CDC said in its May update, which reported 16,233 cases and 86 deaths at 239 facilities in the industry. "Not all facilities performed facility-wide testing. Consequently, many asymptomatic and presymptomatic infections in the overall workforce might have gone unrecognized, and the approximations for disease prevalence in this report might underestimate SARS-CoV-2 infections."

To highlight its concern, the CDC cited recently derived estimates of the total proportion of asymptomatic and presymptomatic infections from data on COVID-19 investigations among cruise ship passengers and evacuees from Wuhan, China, that ranged from 17.

9 percent to 30.8 percent.

"The estimated proportion of asymptomatic and presymptomatic infections among meat and poultry processing workers (11.2 percent) is lower than are previously reported estimates and should be reevaluated as more comprehensive facility-wide testing data are reported," the CDC said.

The United States has been reporting some 40,000 new cases of coronavirus daily in the so-called "second-wave" of the US COVID-19 outbreak. Top US pandemics expert Anthony Fauci said recently the daily case growth could reach 100,000 without proper social-distancing and other safety measures.

Data shows that some 3 million Americans have already been infected by the COVID-19, with a death toll exceeding 133,000.� A new model by the University of Washington also predicts 200,000 coronavirus deaths in the United States by Oct. 1, casting further doubts on economic reopening from lockdowns.