As the coronavirus pandemic starts to take its toll on the lives of essential grocery store workers, retailers and health officials are in turn having to find ways to craft information about those cases for the public.

What that looks like for store employees and grocery buyers depends a lot on the public health system they're in.

Two recent positive COVID-19 results for Wegmans Food Markets employees working in stores 90 minutes apart — one in Monroe County and one in Tompkins County — elicited vastly different responses from the relevant public health authorities.

On April 5, Tompkins County Health Department publicly reported that an employee at the Coffee Shop in the South Meadows Street store in Ithaca was a confirmed COVID-19 case. The announcement advised that the staff member had worked multiple shifts in the period March 23 through April 4. It also recommended testing for anyone who may have had contact and details of where, when and how to register.

Tompkins Health also recommended a 14-day self-quarantine period for anyone whose test results came back negative.

In the wake of the public advice in Ithaca, Samantha Hillson, spokeswoman for Tompkins County Health Department, confirmed Tuesday that there had been an increase in sampling for the presence of coronavirus and attributed that to the report of the positive case in Ithaca. State data showed the number of tests in Tompkins County jumped from 52 cases on April 4 to 94 cases on April 5 when the health department announced the case in Ithaca. Results are still pending.

For Rochester residents, headquarters of the grocery giant, the first public acknowledgement of a positive case among the ranks of Wegmans employee at the Perinton location came in a statement in the evening of April 6 from an unnamed spokesperson first reported by WHAM-TV (Channel 13). In its statement, the retailer confirmed that the last shift worked by the employee was March 22, and that the store had been cleaned and sanitized multiple times, but no details about what period the worker may have worked prior to that.

Potential information vacuum?

The company's dedicated news release page contains no specific information about any of the COVID-19 cases in any of its stores, only the generic guidelines the store is implementing to mitigate the chance of infection. Although the company's April 6 statement refers to communication it is having with Monroe County, the health department has so far left it to Wegmans to disseminate information about circumstances of the positive case in Rochester.

The company did not answer a question Wednesday about whether staff in other locations may have tested positive for COVID-19. A third case was reported at a Dewitt Wegmans store by Onondaga County Health on March 31, and Steuben County is tracing some potential positive contacts at Wegmans stores in Henrietta and Hornell.

Monroe County Public Health Department released no specific information about the Wegmans case in Rochester. County Director of Communications Julie Philipp has confirmed previously the county is leaving it "up to individuals, businesses and institutions to decide how they handle their communications unless there is a serious and imminent threat to public health."

Responding to questions from a reporter Tuesday about its communication around the Perinton COVID-19 case, Wegmans spokeswoman Deana Percasi confirmed "there was no proactive messaging sent out though we did respond to outlets who asked us to confirm. ... With each case we are following the guidance of local health departments and are doing everything we can to keep everyone safe while providing a vital service to our communities."

In contrast, when a Tops Friendly market employee tested positive in Erie County, Chairman and CEO Frank Curci was fielding questions from television reporters on March 16.

The company's handling of the news of a Rochester employee testing positive has raised the ire of Monroe County Legislator Rachel Barnhart, D-Rochester, who for weeks has been broadly critical of the grocery retailer for what she sees as a slow response to community spread of the coronavirus.

"Wegmans harmed its workers by forcing them to choose between protecting their health and a paycheck. They didn’t move all vulnerable workers into other jobs. ... They put people in terrible positions and continue to obfuscate on their response to this crisis."

A question of timeframe

In Onondaga County similar instances where customers may have had contact with employees who have later tested positive for COVID-19 have been regularly reported by the health department on its website.

An April 2 release, about potential exposure from employees at a Tops Friendly Market in Manlius and another advisory on April 5 about potential exposures at two Walgreens stores, a Kinney Drugs and a wine and liquor store, contained much more specific information on days and specific hourly shifts where potential exposure may have occurred. None of that information was made available in the case of the Perinton Wegmans worker.

The timeframes are a significant detail because of the period preceding a positive test result where people can be asymptomatic, or present with milder symptoms. Researchers at the University of Texas, Austin, studying hundreds of cases in China found that the time gap between the transmission of cases can be up to a week.

"Asymptomatic transmission definitely makes containment more difficult," professor Lauren Ancel Meyers said on March 16 in the paper for the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.

The sanitizing of hard surfaces and heavily trafficked areas in retail stores has been a linchpin of the responses by essential businesses that citizens will continue to access throughout the course of the coronavirus pandemic, and Wegmans correctly highlights that measure in their statement about the management of the Perinton store.

But, the human interactions that are inherent to shopping are harder to mitigate, with increased understanding, as shared in recent advice from the World Health Organization, about the role that respiratory droplets shared at a distance of as much as 3 feet can play in transmission. "According to current evidence, COVID-19 virus is primarily transmitted between people through respiratory droplets and contact routes," the agency wrote March 29. The droplets contained in a sneeze or a vigorous conversation can hover in shared air for up to a couple hours.

Too late to matter?

A look back at the positive coronavirus cases by ZIP code provided by the Monroe County Health Department showed an uptick in positive coronavirus cases in the 14450 ZIP code in the week of March 22, after the positive case in the Perinton employee was confirmed. The range of the cases on March 25 was between 0-5 and on March. 27 it was 6-15, but that limited data cannot be viewed as indicative of any links to transmission at 6600 Pittsford-Palmyra Road, or anywhere else.

The low-key approach taken by Wegmans so far may be a reflection of reassurances it has been given based on information known only to the health department about the employee. In turn the department's response is shaped by its own assessment of whether "a serious and imminent threat to public health" exists and the reality of the limited testing capability in Monroe County at this time.

In this instance, the scope of the testing required would have been overwhelming.

"That’s the dilemma — that there’s limited capacity for testing. The testing has to be prioritzed," Dr. Paul Graman, clinical director of infectious disease and hospital epidemiologist at UR Medicine’s Strong Memorial Hospital, told the Democrat and Chronicle on March 9. That scenario is likely to change once batch testing ramps up locally and test results can be turned around in hours, not days.

For the moment though, current testing capacity in Monroe County remains focused on three main groups: frontline health workers, patients in hospital who are seriously ill, and people who have been active in the community that the county thinks may have been positive. With a current capacity in Monroe County that, based on state date from April 6, is a little over 300 tests a day (Onondaga County tested 689 the same day), a run on testing a large cohort of people in Rochester who may have had contact with an asymptomatic store employee over the period of up a week would have been unfeasible.

The Democrat and Chronicle asked the Monroe County Department of Public Health to explain the measures it had taken in the Perinton case. Specifically, we asked:

When had the county advised Wegmans that a staff member had tested positive?

Why wasn't county health advising customers and staff to take similar measures to the ones recommended by Tompkins County Health in Ithaca?

Would the county provide additional details about the March 22 case or other cases going forward?

A written response attributed to the Monroe County public health commissioner, Dr. Michael Mendoza, did not answer any of the questions directly, but his response reiterates his consistent health advice: Stay at home, but when in public on essential business assume you are always at risk.

"You should assume that anyone you come into contact with could be contagious, even without symptoms. ... You should stay six feet away from everyone else. You should avoid touching your face. You should use available hand sanitizer and wipes. You should be taking these steps whether a location has reported a positive test or not. It makes no difference."

Contact Matthew Leonard mmleonard@gannett.com or follow him on Twitter @mleonardmedia.

Includes reporting by Ashley Biviano, Will Cleveland and Steve Orr.

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