April 23, 2020

Something told Carlos Zavala he needed to take COVID-19 seriously.

His mother works at Smithfield Foods and lives with him, his girlfriend and two children.

She wasn’t sick – yet – but Zavala knew there were cases in the plant.

So at his own job as an assembly operator at Dakotaland Manufacturing, he started doing things differently. His employer had provided disposable masks and gloves, and Zavala started using them.

“I started using gloves before she was even sick,” he said. “I started wearing a mask and gloves and wiping everything I touched.”

His mother, who worked beside someone who had tested positive at Smithfield, began to feel sick on a Friday earlier this month.  Zavala took her to get tested.

“She got results Sunday,” he said. “Monday, I called into work that I couldn’t make it because my mom was positive. So I stayed home before I got symptoms. And the next day I did.”

He isolated his mother in a bedroom. But the day after he took her for her test, Zavala, who is 26, started feeling symptoms.

“For me, it was a little bit different,” he said. “For her, it was a really bad cough. She just had no energy. For me, it started with a headache, and then after the headache, it turned into me being dizzy the whole time. The first day I got that, I got a fever. After I got a fever, it went away the next day.”

But the dizziness persisted for a week. He likens it to the head rush you can get upon sitting up but said it was so annoying it hurt to look at his phone.

“I don’t know if I got used to it, or your body adjusts or it went away, I don’t know. And then that’s when the shortness of breath started,” he said. “It was probably four or five days. You have to think about how to breathe so you don’t get anxiety or panic because you can’t take a deep breath. I had to just sit around. Even going from the living room to the bathroom, it tires you out.”

While Zavala and his mother were recovering, his employer Dakotaland Manufacturing took immediate steps at its Sioux Falls facility.

“He’s one of our most cross-trained employees,” president Matt Erfman said. “He gets to work in a lot of departments. So when we learned of his positive test, of course, that expanded our close-contact list because he moves around.”

The business has been constantly communicating that employees who are sick should stay home and is paying them to do so, he said.

“They’ve been really good about that, and that’s one of the things that helped us (with Carlos). Him following the guidelines really helped us out,” Erfman said. “We identified close contacts who worked close to him before he was ill, and none of those folks ever developed symptoms.”

Still, when they learned of the positive test, the business immediately shut down for two days and through the weekend.

“We brought in Intek, they thoroughly disinfected the facility, and we reopened Monday,” Erfman said. “We’re really trying to adhere to CDC guidelines. We’re pushing the social distancing, maintained 6 feet, frequent thorough hand washing and frequently cleaning and disinfecting.”

The production support office is empty because the staff is working remotely.

The company has scheduled 30 minutes between shifts to eliminate people coming in and out at the same time and is bringing in nurses starting next week to do daily temperature checks.

Dakotaland, which was formed in 2015 when Sioux Falls-based Westland Manufacturing merged with JMS Precision in Watertown, has 150 employees between the two locations, including 90 in Sioux Falls.

As a contract manufacturer, Dakotaland supports customers in industries ranging from communications and electronics to agriculture. But many of its clients are supporting the COVID-19 emergency response, including a new one that was coming together as the plant itself was responding to its own COVID case.

That area manufacturer reached out, needing help making components for new treatment ventilators, “and we had capacity available,” Erfman said.

“It’s backfilling some of our industries that have taken a dip a little bit with the situation. For example, one of the things we support are after-market motorcycle suspensions, and that really dropped off, so we’re able to keep those folks busy supporting projects related to the ventilators and some other essential industries we’re supporting.”

They also have been busy manufacturing products that go into large emergency generators for places such as hospitals and grocery stores, as well as components for firetrucks and rescue vehicles. There has been interest in potentially having the company manufacture hand sanitizer stations.

“Some of the projects go into June at this point, and I would anticipate it will continue,” Erfman said. “We continue to hear of other COVID-related essential projects that are coming in.”

Zavala returned to work Monday.

“We’re certainly glad he’s well and back and able to contribute,” Erfman said.

He is too.

“When Matt told me they’re making ventilators, I was like, ‘Oh, that’s good.’ That makes me happy because older people are probably going to struggle breathing. I’m happy we’re part of helping everybody that needs it,” Zavala said, adding he hopes others use caution while the virus is still a threat.

“I don’t want nobody to get it. Just be careful and sanitize everything you use. Follow the rules they put out there for everybody.”