As the COVID-19 pandemic sweeps through the workforce at meatpacking plants in Iowa and elsewhere, Jonathan Grieder, a teacher at Waterloo West High School, is worried.

Many of his students are from families with parents who are among the nearly 3,000 people employed at a Tyson Foods meatpacking facility that is the city's largest employer. The state has reported 85 positive tests for the coronavirus in Black Hawk County, where the Waterloo plant is located, and the virus already has ripped through another Tyson plant, in Louisa County, infecting 186 workers there and forcing its extended closure.

Liz Croston, a Tyson spokesperson, confirmed late Wednesday that two employees of that plant had died, presumably of complications of COVID-19.

“We know that the populations that often work here are not populations that always have the best access to health care in a lot of forms,” Grieder, also a Waterloo City Council member, said Wednesday. “So, as a teacher and as a community member, it scares me.”

The ranks of those who share his concern are growing.

At her Wednesday morning news briefing, Gov. Kim Reynolds said Iowa officials will be expanding testing of packing plant workers for COVID-19 and consulting with federal health and agriculture officials.

"So we're doing … all of the above to make sure that we can protect our employees but also make sure that we really protect this critical and essential infrastructure, as well," she said.

A broad coalition of groups representing workers and concerned citizens addressed a letter to Reynolds later Wednesday, calling on her to take a series of actions to protect workers at meatpacking and other manufacturing plants. And logistics experts expressed worries about the effects on the food supply as COVID-19 spreads through the plants, where thousands of workers labor side by side in often cramped quarters.

The Louisa plant is among a growing number of packing plants experiencing outbreaks of COVID-19. Last week, National Beef Packing Co. announced it was closing its Iowa Premium plant in Tama until April 20 because of cases among its workers.

► Coronavirus in Iowa: The latest updates on the spread and impact

There also have been confirmed cases of the illness among workers at a JBS plant in Marshalltown. And just across the Iowa border in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, the nation's largest pork processing plant, owned by Smithfield Foods, has shut down as COVID-19 sickens the workforce.

As of Wednesday, 518 Smithfield employees had tested positive for COVID-19, and authorities identified 126 cases of nonemployees who became infected when they came into contact with the workers, according to the South Dakota Department of Health.

The 644 combined cases make Smithfield the largest U.S. COVID-19 cluster, according to tracking by the New York Times. The previous top cluster was 585 cases aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt in Guam.

A team from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has arrived in Sioux Falls to assist, and Reynolds said Wednesday she planned to consult with the CDC and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue "to see if they can provide even some assistance at our packing plants, as well."

► More from our colleagues at the Argus Leader on Wednesday:‘I lost him because of that horrible place’: Smithfield worker dies from COVID-19

State sending testing kits

Reynolds said that the state has made initial contact with all 18 meat processing plants in Iowa, and that it was sending 900 testing kits for COVID-19 to Louisa County, in addition to 200 sent last week.

Chris Schwartz, chair of the Black Hawk County Board of Supervisors, said he had been advocating for more tests. He said he was contacted by the governor’s office Wednesday and told that 1,500 kits of swabs and an undetermined amount of rapid tests would be coming to Waterloo.

Pat Garrett, a spokesman for the governor, confirmed to the Des Moines Register that the state is sending supplies to test workers at the Waterloo Tyson plant. He declined to comment on whether the governor's office had been contacted about any cases at the plant.

Reynolds said the state Department of Agriculture already visits and inspects the Iowa plants along with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, "but we're going to continue to reach out and provide the testing that they need to make sure that we can protect their employees, first and foremost" and ensure that the "food supply is working its way to our grocery stores, to Americans and people all around the world."

Advocates: Workers need more protection

A coalition of 66 groups that included the American Friends Service Committee, the Catholic dioceses of Des Moines, Davenport and Sioux City, the League of United Latin American Citizens of Iowa, Disability Rights Iowa and several labor unions said in a letter to Reynolds that she's not doing enough.

The coalition called on her "at a minimum" to require employers to take steps including ceasing all nonessential operations; ensuring social distancing in factories; providing sanitation and ensuring medical care for all workers, regardless of whether they have health insurance; and granting workers paid sick and disability leave.

Erica Johnson, director of the Iowa chapter of American Friends Service Committee, said at a virtual news conference late Wednesday afternoon that workers at the plants are afraid to report to work because employers are failing to follow basic safety measures.

"We know that they're already vulnerable in a lot of different ways to being taken advantage of," she said of the largely immigrant workforce.

Rafael Morataya, executive director of the Center for Worker Justice of Eastern Iowa, said immigrants in Iowa are the front-line workers at food manufacturing plants.

"They are proud of the work that they do, but they are not willing to risk their lives for those jobs, and they are struggling to demand that their employers do more to protect them," he said.

Companies acknowledge increased absenteeism

Tyson, which maintains it is aggressively ensuring worker safety, acknowledged to the Des Moines Register that it is dealing with elevated rates of absences at its Iowa plants.

"Concerns about the spread of the virus, instances of positive COVID-19 cases in plant communities, and related situations (such as our team members needing to handle child care and other family issues) have resulted in higher absenteeism at some plant locations," a Tyson spokesperson said in an email.

The company would not say how many employees currently are off work.

Nikki Richardson, a spokeswoman for JBS USA, also acknowledged an increase in absenteeism at the Marshalltown plant and said it is offering a $600 bonus to workers who show up for all of their shifts through mid-May.

"We don’t want anyone to come to work sick, and no employees will lose their jobs for being sick," she said. "People who are out sick are still eligible to receive the bonus, but team members who are healthy and choosing to stay home will not."

Schwartz, the Black Hawk supervisor, said he’s particularly concerned about the lack of social distancing at meatpacking plants.

“It really is not conducive to social distancing at all,” Schwartz said.

In March, workers at the 2,700-employee JBS plant complained through the League of United Latin American Citizens of unsafe conditions that they said included crowding in locker rooms and on production floors and insufficient personal protective equipment. They provided what they said were recent photos showing the packed spaces.

Kulule Amosa said her husband, who works at the now-closed Smithfield Foods plant in Sioux Falls, told her the locker rooms there were so tightly packed that he sometimes had to push his way through a crowd. Coughs echoed through the bathrooms.

Amosa is pregnant, and she said her husband often was afraid to come home for fear of infecting her.

“I’m really, really scared and worried,” Amosa said.

Her husband declined to be named over concern about his employment.

Morataya, of the Center for Worker Justice, said many meatpacking plant employees are afraid they will lose their jobs if they speak out about the conditions inside their workplaces. He said the state needs to provide enough COVID-19 tests to monitor every employee at the plants.

“They don't know who in the plant is getting sick,” he said. “And, in addition, taking temperatures before the shift starts is not enough.”

Symptoms may not appear until 2-14 days after exposure to the coronavirus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And some people infected with COVID-19 are asymptomatic or show only mild symptoms.

Concerns raised about food supply

Because the workers who slaughter and pack the nation’s meat are vulnerable, so, too, is the supply of that meat. Smithfield CEO Kenneth Sullivan said the closure of the plant, which produces roughly 5% of the U.S. pork supply each day, is “pushing our country perilously close to the edge in terms of our meat supply.”

While the processing plants are closing or short on workers, retail and logistics analyst Brittain Ladd said problems at warehouses are slowing the food supply chain, as well. Companies like Tyson and Smithfield may be preparing much less pork, but there is still plenty available in cold storage — food once destined for since-closed restaurants that now can go to grocery store aisles.

The problem, Ladd said, is that some warehouse employees have stopped showing up, as well, worried, like the meatpacking workers, about falling ill.

“It’s the worst situation they can encounter,” said Ladd, of Six-Page Consulting. “They have more work than they can handle. But they have too few workers to do the work.”

Lisa Kaczke of the Sioux Falls Argus Leader and the Associated Press contributed to this article.

Barbara Rodriguez covers health care and politics for the Register. She can be reached by email at bcrodriguez@registermedia.com or by phone at 515-284-8011. Follow her on Twitter @bcrodriguez.

Tyler Jett covers jobs and the economy for the Register. Contact him at 515-284-8215 and tjett@registermedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @LetsJett.

Tommy Birch covers Iowa State athletics and the Iowa Cubs and is pinch-hitting to cover the coronavirus. Reach him at tbirch@dmreg.com or 515-284-8468.

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