GUYMON, Okla./ WASHINGTON – (Reuters) – Over 25 years, the huge pork plant that controls this little city brought tasks, brand-new residents and an economic lifeline to a gradually diminishing farming neighborhood.
A worker at a hog processing plant consumes behind plexiglass screens set up in the facility’s lunchroom to try to contain the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) within the plant, in Guymon, Oklahoma, U.S., May 13,2020 Photo taken May 13,2020 Coast Foods Inc./ Handout through REUTERS
Drawn in by relatively good salaries at Coast Foods, immigrants like Felix and Pilar Jimenez gotten here by the hundreds to massacre hogs and process meat for delivery all over the world. The Mexican couple started work in Guymon, on the large plains of Oklahoma’s panhandle, about a year after the plant opened, followed in time by their boys Michael, now 26, and Anthony,22
In recent months, as in numerous U.S. cities with meat- packing operations, COVID-19 ripped through the plant and surrounding neighborhood, bringing economic unpredictability, fear and – in the case of the Jimenez family – catastrophe.
Seaboard reports that, as of May 21, 641 of its some 2,700 employees checked positive for the infection – approximately a quarter of its workforce. Pilar, Michael and Anthony Jimenez all got sick. Did Felix, 56, who had been mostly homebound as he recovered from heart bypass surgical treatment. He passed away Might 9.
Guymon becomes part of the coronavirus’ brand-new frontier – primarily rural communities with large meatpacking plants where workers frequently work inches apart, carpool to their jobs and live in crowded or multi-generational houses.
Talked to at the household’s home days after his dad’s death, Michael Jimenez said Guymon homeowners need to get up to the dangers of the coronavirus, something that extends beyond the plant and particularly threatens older and medically delicate individuals like Felix.
” I just hope the entire community understands how fatal this can be,” stated Michael Jimenez, speaking through a protective mask.
It’s challenging to pin down how each of the Jimenez member of the family got the illness. Pilar and her children state any of them might have caught it at the packaging plant, then infected Felix.
” I believe we brought the infection house to him,” stated Pilar Jimenez, 53, who coped with both Anthony and Felix.
Michael Jimenez stated Felix never ever left the house other than to walk the canine, and then only with a mask, adding that he and Anthony worked together with a colleague who they later on found out was ill.
On the other hand, the virus is circulating in the broader neighborhood, not simply at the plant. Texas County, where the plant lies, had actually tape-recorded 820 cases since Friday early morning, including 4 deaths.
In spite of the high rate of infection among plant workers, the business has reported no deaths amongst workers.
Duke Sand, ceo of Seaboard Foods, informed Reuters the business is sticking to U.S. Centers for Illness Control and Prevention (CDC) assistance on how to consist of the virus at the plant, consisting of timetables on when impacted workers need to return to work and what safety equipment, such as screens and masks, to provide.
Sand stated the company, a subsidiary of Coast Corp, has been fortunate in that it saw its first case in mid-April, well after other meatpacking centers around the country. Other plants have actually been less transparent with their numbers – for example, Smithfield Foods [SFII.UL], the world’s biggest hog processor, decreased in a May 8 declaration to Reuters to confirm case overalls at its various facilities, mentioning the need to regard staff members’ privacy.
Asked about Felix Jimenez’ death, Coast’s Sand stated: “The purpose of this testing is that we don’t have any catastrophes such as that.”
DIVIDED BELIEFS
As in lots of meat-packing towns around the country, local leaders and residents are torn about how to deal with the brand-new hazard, which pits the economic needs of workers and local companies against rapidly growing health risks to everybody in the neighborhood.
The Seaboard plant, where wages begin at $16 per hour, is by far the largest employer in the city of less than 11,300 people. The plant is both a linchpin of the regional economy and a location in the country’s fight versus the new coronavirus.
Opinions about the risks of the virus do not always fall along neat or predictable lines, interviews with about two lots regional citizens show. Although the population is small, Guymon and Texas County are demographically and politic