Dozens of KC, WyCo residents among 412 asymptomatic workers at St. Joseph food plant
About 60 Kansas City residents are among the more than 400 workers at a St. Joseph food plant who have tested positive for the new coronavirus despite showing no symptoms.
Residents should expect a spike in confirmed cases in Kansas City because of the outbreak at Triumph Foods in Buchanan County, the Kansas City, Missouri Health Department said Tuesday.
“The processing plant cases from St. Joseph show how interconnected and mobile we are,” Frank Thompson, the department’s deputy director, said in a statement. “Those 60 cases also highlight the needs for expanded testing and contact tracing to contain COVID-19.”
City health officials were contacting the infected workers to determine who they may have come in contact with.
Kansas City reported 586 confirmed cases of the virus Monday, a figure that climbed to 664 by Tuesday. In a news release, the city said the surge in cases was connected to the meat processing plant. Sixteen Kansas City residents have died.
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas shared a news story Monday on Twitter about the pork processors’ testing and said nowhere was immune to COVID-19, including western Missouri plants.
“Hundreds of their employees come from immigrant communities based in Kansas City,” Lucas wrote. “We will do all we can to get all tested, treated, and contacts traced to keep the illness from spreading in the community.”
The processing plant has been tied to other confirmed cases in the metro.
In Wyandotte County, health officials said 78 residents who work there tested positive for the virus over the weekend. While the outbreak occurred in Missouri, cases are counted in the state and county in which the infected person lives.
Comprehensive testing of employees and contract workers at the St. Joseph plant found 412 of 2,367 people had COVID-19 with no symptoms, the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services reported Tuesday.
That figure was up from 359 employees who received positive test results Saturday. The number had been reported at 295 Friday.
The workers were tested on site from April 27 to Friday.
Before testing of asymptomatic employees began, 46 symptomatic workers tested positive for the virus.
In a statement last week, Triumph Foods said the results were not unexpected considering the contagious nature of COVID-19.
“The test results are a snapshot in time and provide our organization and each individual employee with information to protect employees, families and the community,” the statement said.
As of Tuesday, more than 8,900 Missourians had tested positive for the virus and 377 had died. A total of 94,904 have been tested.
The Kansas City area saw its sharpest rise in the number of new COVID-19 cases on Monday.
With 123 additional cases, the area encompassing Kansas City and Jackson, Clay and Platte counties in Missouri and Johnson and Wyandotte counties in Kansas has recorded 2,507 cases.
This story was originally published May 5, 2020 at 4:39 PM.
