A coronavirus outbreak with nearly 40 confirmed cases so far has been traced to a fish-packing plant in Morgan Hill, according to health officials.
The previously unknown cluster of cases began at Lusamerica Foods Inc., a wholesale fish distributor, Santa Clara County Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody said in a committee meeting Tuesday.
The spouse of an employee at the plant was hospitalized with COVID-19 several weeks ago, prompting the employee to get tested, Cody said. The company notified employees in contact with that worker, she said, and with county help tested all employees “and identified 38 more people who were positive from the company.”
Cody added that “all of those 38 people are of course no longer at work, and we will be returning to repeat testing” on Wednesday.
There were no deaths associated with the outbreak as of Tuesday, officials said. The company did not say if any employees had been hospitalized.
Louise Moretti, Lusamerica Fish Company’s chief operating officer, said in a phone call Tuesday that “we are experiencing cases, as most companies that are operating right now are.”
“We’ve been very fortunate,” Moretti added, “that those that have tested positive, the majority are asymptomatic, so they are not experiencing the worst symptoms.”
In addition to testing all other workers, and retesting all those who tested negative, a Lusamerica spokesperson added in a statement that the company has also closed down shared facilities where social distancing is “a challenge” like its cafeteria and locker rooms and is taking the temperature of every employee upon arrival at the facility.
Some employees’ relatives, who asked not to be identified because they feared getting them in trouble, disputed that account and said workers had little access to sanitizing equipment and that social distancing and hygiene measures weren’t enforced.
Moreover, the relatives said that although the first cases emerged a month ago, the plant didn’t initially tell employees about the exposure risk, and even after everyone was tested, they continued working together while awaiting results, potentially spreading the disease further.
“They tried to keep it discreet,” said a woman whose boyfriend works at the plant, who said he was among those who tested positive. “That’s something they need to let everyone know. They all work together. We all have families. They need to be considerate of that.”
Coronavirus has rippled through meatpacking and other food-packing facilities in California, including rural Kings County in the Central Valley, where an outbreak at the Central Valley Meat Company punted the county into the state’s top five in terms of COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents.
Lusamerica is a 35-year-old family-owned business with a distribution facility in Vernon, near Los Angeles. At least nine industrial plants in Vernon are currently being investigated for coronavirus outbreaks, Los Angeles County health officials said Sunday, including several meat-processing facilities.
No outbreaks have been traced to Lusamerica’s Vernon location, Moretti said, nor at a processing plant in Fife, Washington.
The company sells fish products primarily under its “Tasty Catch” brand across the West Coast. Moretti did not immediately clarify how many employees work at the Morgan Hill site; the overall workforce is around 250 people, according to the company website.
