The coronavirus pandemic is cutting into supermarket meat supplies and affecting choices available in meat cases as plant workers get sick and processors struggle to meet surging demand.

The pandemic is keeping thousands of meat-plant workers home across the U.S., according to industry officials, leaving work undone and reducing meat production as consumers turn to grocery stores for more of their food amid shutdowns of restaurants, schools and other providers. Those shifts are prompting some meat suppliers to reduce the range of cuts they sell to supermarkets. Others are repurposing meat that ordinarily would go to restaurants.

At B&R Stores Inc., a Midwestern grocery chain, meat sales have jumped 30% over the past month, while suppliers are filling only about 75% of meat orders, President Mark Griffin said. In response, B&R is limiting customers to one 10-pound roll of ground beef and offering fewer varieties of leanness. The chain’s deli stations are selling smaller chicken pieces.

“We are very concerned about fresh meat,” Mr. Griffin said. “We have fresh meat today, but there are indicators that it will be a problem in the future.”

The reliance of meat processors on thousands of processing-plant workers has left the industry vulnerable to disruption as the coronavirus spreads, and companies and government officials try to balance food production and public health. “If you can’t harvest the livestock, you can’t turn it into food,” said Kenneth Sullivan, chief executive of Smithfield Foods Inc. The company closed two more pork plants Wednesday.