All of the approximately 400 employees of a slaughterhouse in Fleury-lès-Aubrais (Loiret), where a "cluster" of 34 cases of Covid-19 has been confirmed, without serious cases, will be screened by Tuesday, announced Sunday the Regional Health Agency (ARS).
"Given the importance of the circulation of the virus" in the slaughterhouse, the ARS of Center-Val de Loire has decided to "proceed to the screening of all the employees of the company beyond the only cutting unit that was the subject of the initial investigations, "said Laurent Habert, director general of ARS Center-Val de Loire on Sunday, during a press conference.
Make an inventory
This screening, described as "fairly considerable", organized until Tuesday thanks to the mobile units of the CHR of Orleans, "will allow an exhaustive and precise inventory of the presence and circulation of the virus within the company ”, according to Laurent Habert.
As of Sunday morning, some 40 employees have already been tested and the results should be known in the evening or Monday morning, according to the same source. Pierre Pouessel, prefect of Loiret and of the Center-Val de Loire region, estimated that it was a "significant grouped covid case", while specifying that there were "no serious cases in this Stadium". The prefect has decided to close the business until Monday 25 May and the reopening of the site will only be possible "if the sanitary conditions are met".
Asked about a possible comparison with the Mulhouse “cluster”, the prefect replied that “the big difference is that there are systematic tests and that the whole objective is to break the chain”.
"According to the company's HRD, there were masks, gels, temperature measurements at the entrance to the slaughterhouse and it seems that the protocol was respected," said Pierre Pouessel.
Several cases in slaughterhouses
The Tradival slaughterhouse has a capacity of 55,000 tonnes per year, making it "the largest slaughterhouse for slaughter animals, specializing in the pig sector, in the Center-Val de Loire region". This slaughterhouse, which is characterized "by its obsolescence" according to the prefect, and which has three units (slaughter, cutting, processing), belongs to Sicarev. "The processing unit has been closed since December due to a food health problem and so far the corrective measures have been deemed insufficient for its reopening," said the prefect.
He revealed the existence of an investment project to modernize the fifteen million euro slaughterhouse.
This new "cluster" originating in a slaughterhouse adds to several cases, in France and abroad. Six employees working in a Côtes-d'Armor slaughterhouse tested positive at Covid, leading to a massive screening campaign, ARS Brittany announced on Friday. In the United States, several slaughterhouses have become centers of contagion from Covid-19.
In Germany, in Schleswig-Holstein, border region of Denmark, a slaughterhouse had registered 109 cases of contamination as of May 8, raising suspicion on the whole industry in the country.
Asked about the possible difficulty of applying barrier gestures in slaughterhouses, Laurent Habert estimated that the 34 confirmed cases, in a place where 160 people work, showed "that there have been a lot of contacts and exchanges in this unity among the personnel ”. “Perhaps we will also have to look, and this will be one of the aims of the investigation, the conditions in which the agents and the staff are together, including outside the production chains. We will have to see if the barrier and physical distance gestures have been applied or not ... Is it for reasons of smallness? ”He asked.
Health
Coronavirus: Slaughterhouses, new places of high risk contamination
Health
Coronavirus in the Côtes d'Armor: Massive screening after the discovery of several cases in a slaughterhouse
- France
- Screening
- Covid 19
- Coronavirus
- Slaughterhouse
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