The Tyson Fresh Meats plant in Logansport announced Wednesday that it will temporarily close, after 146 employees tested positive for the novel coronavirus.

The hog slaughtering and processing facility, which according to Tyson produces 3 million pounds of pork daily, suspended production Monday to allow for additional cleaning and sanitizing.

The facility reopened Tuesday and has been running at limited capacity due to lower worker attendance. The plant is expected to stop all production by Saturday.

"The combination of worker absenteeism, COVID-19 cases and community concerns has resulted in a collective decision to close," said Steve Stouffer, group president of Tyson Fresh Meats, the beef-and-pork subsidiary of Tyson Foods.

Cass County Health Department Administrator Serenity Alter said all remaining employees will start getting tested on Thursday. The hope is to get results back within several days, so that the facility can resume production.

Alter said another 47 people in Cass County have tested positive for the coronavirus. Some of those can be traced back to Tyson employees. Alter said the Indiana State Department of Health is sending a strike team to the plant for assistance.

“Closing facilities have serious implications to the national food supply for American families, local communities, growers and farmers,” Stouffer said. “When a facility closes, the availability of protein for consumers across the nation will only decrease."

Also on Wednesday, Tyson Foods suspended operations at one of its sites in Iowa amid the outbreak. The Waterloo, Iowa, plant is Tyson’s largest pork plant and accounts for approximately 4% of U.S. pork processing capacity. There are some 15 plants, located largely in the nation’s center, that make up nearly 60% of the country’s pork processing capacity.

Two of those 15 plants are in Indiana, including Tyson’s Logansport facility, which accounts for 3% of the U.S. pork processing capacity. There have been at least two confirmed cases of coronavirus at the Indiana Packers Corp. plant in Delphi — Indiana’s other major pork processing site. That plant remains open. Attempts to reach the Indiana Packers plant on Wednesday were not immediately successful.

Stouffer, of Tyson, said consumers will start to feel the impact at the grocery store as production slows.

Across the country, meat-packing plants are shutting down after being hit by the pandemic. Some have dozens, if not hundreds, of confirmed cases. A Smithfield Foods facility in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, has become the nation’s largest coronavirus hotspot after reporting more than 640 confirmed cases of patients who either worked at the plant or had ties to those who did.

Smithfield has closed that plant along with others in Wisconsin and Missouri, according to the Associated Press. Similar scenes have played out in the last week in meat-packing plants in Colorado and other states. These facilities have tried to implement different protocols to prevent the spread, but in many cases have still faced shutdowns.

IndyStar reporter Sarah Bowman contributed to this story.

Contact IndyStar reporter Elizabeth DePompei at 317-444-6196 or edepompei@indystar.com. Follow her on Twitter: @edepompei.