(St. Paul, Mn.)– As reported this morning by the Minnesota Department of Health, there was a spike in COVID-19 cases in Nobles County. At the afternoon press briefing, Gov. Tim Walz confirmed the outbreak is tied to the JBS plant in Worthington…
“And that brings me to somewhat of a developing situation that some of you are starting to see at the JBS pork processing plant in Worthington. We have positive cases showing up in the JBS facility. I think for many of you very familiar with Southwest Minnesota there is a lot of movement across back and forth from South Dakota. There is also a lot of family members that work in both plants and so there is a lot of cross work that went there, cross contamination that started to happen.”
Minnesota State Epidemiologist Kris Ehresmann (AIRS-muhn) outlines the outbreak…
“As of yesterday, we had 19 cases in Nobles County and as the Commissioner indicated today we are over 30 cases and as we were doing interviews with the new cases yesterday, we identified that a number of these individuals were employees at the JBS plant.”
The State has sent a team of specialists to Worthington to work with JBS and the community to help with the response. Gov. Walz says this could be a good test for reopening the state…
GOV Walz cut 1
“What I can tell you is the plant is up and running, that they have implemented many changes to the plant in terms of getting out PPE to their workers, putting up shields and they have indicated to us the desire to go further. I think, again, we know that one of the ways to get back to normal, and the JBS plant may be a test run for us on this is, widespread testing in these cases is the way to go about this, ways to go about tracing. We know this is a big step. We know that it’s hard but we also know this is the path out of this, to be able to test, to isolate, to do the tracing, to make sure we are isolating everyone who came in contact and then to move forward.”
Earlier today, Gov. Walz announced that he is signing an executive order opening golf courses, fishing, boating and bait shops in the state. That order will take affect at 5am tomorrow.
(Courtesy Community First Broadcasting station KKOJ in Jackson, Mn.)
