April 23, 2020

A 15-page report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledged there were precautions taken at Smithfield Foods in Sioux Falls to limit the spread of COVID-19 but detailed many additional recommendations to improve the approach before the plant reopens.

The report did not discuss a process for reopening.

“I want to thank Vice President Pence, Secretary of Agriculture Perdue and the CDC for prioritizing the situation at Smithfield Foods in Sioux Falls,” Gov. Kristi Noem said in a statement. “Their partnership has been critical to the work that we’ve done to get this cluster under control and safeguard the health of this workforce. My team at the Department of Health will continue to work with Smithfield and offer any assistance we can to help them implement these CDC recommendations, so they can safely reopen this plant as soon as possible.”

In a subsequent media briefing, Noem said the Department of Health planned to work with Smithfield to ensure recommendations were adhered to prior to a reopening. No timetable for that was established.

“I don’t see any reason for there to be long delays,” Noem said.

The CDC team said it was unable to identify important demographic information about the workforce, limiting its ability to understand the diversity of the employees. However, plant management reported that there were approximately 40 languages spoken by employees in the plant and that English, Spanish, Kunama, Swahili, Nepali, Tigrinya, Amharic, French, Oromo and Vietnamese are the top 10 languages.

“We were also unable to obtain information about the workstations of confirmed positive cases,” the report said. “This type of information could provide a better understanding of what workplace factors may have contributed to the spread of COVID-19 among employees. Key demographic and workstation information was requested from the company to help answer some of these questions in the future. Additional recommendations and findings may be provided upon receipt of demographic and workstation information.”

While the recommendations made are specific to this Smithfield plant, broader recommendations for the industry are coming, the CDC said.

The recommendations included specific approaches to social distancing, ways to improve hygiene and improvements to screening and sick leave procedures.

The CDC learned Smithfield plans to provide facemasks with a moldable nosepiece to all employees before entering the plant daily.

“We learned that they have a plan to provide additional facemasks to employees throughout the day if facemasks become wet or soiled. We also learned that face shields will be provided to all non-administrative employees moving forward. These face shields will be affixed to the hard hat,” it said.

“We observed some employees still working at the plant either not wearing facemasks or wearing them incorrectly — e.g., wearing them over the mouth but not the nose. Plant management indicated that they had estimated the number of facemasks and face shields that would be required for a 30-day supply for the plant running at full capacity. Plant management was also conducting informal experiments with both commercial and home-remedy-style anti-fogging products — e.g., shaving cream — for the face shields.”

To view the complete report click here.

Smithfield announced it would be closed indefinitely on April 12.