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Health

Coronovirus outbreak at Trident seafood plant in Akutan now includes 135 workers

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A COVID-19 outbreak at the Trident Seafoods plant in the tiny, remote community of Akutan now encompasses 135 workers including several sick enough to require medevacs to Anchorage.

The plant, North America’s largest, right now has about 700 workers quarantined on an island in the Bering Sea with the nearest hospital hundreds of miles away. Trident is taking the unusual step of stockpiling medical supplies including ventilators in case weather grounds air ambulances.

Two COVID-positive workers were sick enough to get flown Monday to Anchorage for hospitalization, according to state health officials. Another worker with breathing problems was medevaced earlier.

“We arranged Coast Guard-assisted evacuations yesterday for two employees whose condition was quickly worsening,” Trident spokeswoman Stefanie Moreland said in a statement Tuesday. “We now have more private-sector resources lined up in case further emergency evacuations are needed and weather permits.”

The Alaska Department of Health and Social Services said Tuesday that 135 out of 307 employees tested so far came back positive for COVID-19.

Five workers have been medevaced in recent days, not all for virus-related problems, including the two COVID-19 patients flown out Monday, officials say. Three others have been released and are staying in Anchorage.

As a precaution, Trident sent out ventilators, oxygen and CPAP breathing machines, spokesman Shannon Carroll said Tuesday. “No one is on ventilators or oxygen currently.”

Trident is also taking the unusual step of sending off-island employees with underlying medical conditions that put them at high risk of more severe infections if they get the virus. The company is sending those employees by boat to Unalaska about 35 miles away where they are being flown to quarantine in Anchorage.

Fifteen had left or were departing by mid-day Tuesday, according to state epidemiologist Dr. Joe McLaughlin.

Such outbreaks can take weeks to play out, state health officials say.

The Trident plant sits about a half mile from Akutan but operates as a closed campus, a policy that started in March when the pandemic began. The workforce dwarfs the community’s population of about 100. Workers complete a 14-day quarantine before getting on the island.

It’s unclear how the virus got into the facility.

The plant is a processing hub for Bering Sea harvests of pollock, crab and cod. The workforce is expected to swell to 1,400 in the weeks ahead, provided normal operations resume. The company last week said it opted to hold about 365 workers in Anchorage once their quarantine ended.

Trident officials say the number of positive cases out of total tests is relatively high for now, partly because they tested high-risk populations and known close contacts of infected workers first. The company won’t report the final rate of positive test until it has rapid results from mosts employees.

The outbreak was first discovered on Jan. 17 when a plant worker with breathing problems was tested prior to the Coast Guard flight out. Three of their roommates tested positive that day.

More testing is continuing, Trident officials said. Weather delays last week initially slowed that process but supplies and additional medical professionals are now on site.

A medical team is conducting rapid antigen tests for quick results and is also collecting samples for PCR tests, which detect the virus’ genetic material and are slower but more accurate, to be shipped to a lab outside of the region, the company said.

Trident is paying the Akutan employees during the shutdown, officials said.

“We’re providing safe activities, wellness support, WIFI data cards for downloading books, magazines and other entertainment, and are providing a safe checkout and return process for on-site games and movies,” Moreland said. “We’re grateful for our people’s strength and resilience in a challenging situation.”

The Daily News has been unable to reach workers at the plant.

The Trident outbreak is the third in a seafood processing plant in the Aleutian Islands, about a week into the billion-dollar Bering Sea pollock fishery. Crab and cod seasons were underway. The pollock season began Jan. 20.

Pollock, a small white-fleshed fish found in abundance in the Bering, is part of a multi-billion-dollar industry that churns out everything from fish sticks to sushi.

Westward Seafoods, owner of Alyeska Seafoods Inc. in Unalaska, on Friday became the third Aleutian plant to temporarily shut down. The plant halted production based on a cluster of positive COVID-19 cases identified during surveillance testing of workers at the Alyeska plant, according to a city update.

Alyeska “has enacted their plans for responding to positive cases identified within their workforce” which includes isolating people who test positive, helping with contact tracing, quarantining people found to be close contacts of infected workers and conducting more testing.

A message left at the company’s Seattle headquarters Tuesday was not returned.

An outbreak at another Unalaska plant, operated by UniSea, shut down earlier though officials have said they hoped to reopen by this weekend. A UniSea representative did not return a request for information Tuesday about the reopening schedule.

As of Monday, 30 of the 32 active cases in Unalaska were industry-related, according to the city website. Five new industry cases were reported that day. Overall, that’s a decline from the 50 active industry cases reported Friday.

The sudden plant shut down left some fishermen stuck at the docks with holds full of fish, according to a report by Alaska Public Media.

Last year’s crab, cod and pollock seasons didn’t trigger any major outbreaks. That’s because plants already had workers contained on site when the pandemic surfaced in Alaska. This year, workers traveled from the Lower 48, where transmission is ongoing. Many companies also operate open campus facilities in Alaskan communities with high rates of COVID-19 spread.

The situation is bad but not as bad as it could be, at least for now, industry observers say. Unlike derby-style salmon fisheries, pollock is managed on a quota basis in which shares are assigned to cooperatives that decide when they want to harvest their fish.

The growing concern, however, is for continued outbreaks that push plant closures for weeks, deeper into the current fishing season that runs into April.

“We have a great team focused on making sure we’re preventing further spread of the virus while we continue to assess each individual employee’s health, care for the sick and understand who has already been infected,” Trident CEO Joe Bundrant said in Tuesday’s statement. “We will take every step possible to ensure our people and plant are safe before restarting production.”

— Reporter Annie Berman contributed to this story.

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World

What happened when one Chinese city shut down after new Covid outbreak

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Volunteers in protective suits disinfect in a residential area of Tonghua, China on January 24, 2021.

Visual China Group | Getty Images

BEIJING — One small Chinese city’s rush to control the coronavirus has left some residents without food, and some officials without jobs.

The fallout shows the extreme lengths to which local Chinese authorities will go to try to contain the coronavirus. While new cases in China so far this year remain far below that of other countries, the stringent prevention measures can quickly cause greater disruptions to work and daily life.

After a spike in Covid-19 cases in mid-January, Tonghua city, about a 10 hour drive northeast of Beijing, announced on Wednesday that no one could leave the city. Authorities added that all apartment complexes were essentially locked down.

People stuck at home and with little time to stock up on food turned to smartphone-based delivery apps, but many complained online that they couldn’t get their orders, according to posts on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter.

On Saturday, the local Communist Party discipline and inspection commission dismissed three officials for their poor performance in the oversight of the pandemic situation, state media said. Eleven other officials received severe warnings, the report said.

Then on Sunday, Tonghua city apologized to its roughly 500,000 residents for “untimely” delivery of daily necessities and general inconveniences. The city added there was a severe shortage of workers but sufficient food.

More than 11,000 people left mostly angry comments on a national state media post about the apology on Weibo. Some users described how they or neighbors were going hungry and hadn’t received their orders for three or four days.

Many user comments noted an inability to place orders on Eleme, a food delivery app backed by Alibaba. The company did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment.

Nasdaq-listed Dada, a grocery delivery company which saw a surge in growth during the lockdowns of the initial coronavirus outbreak last year, said neither of its two apps operate in Tonghua city.

Covid-19 first emerged in late 2019 in the Chinese city of Wuhan. Chinese authorities shut down more than half the country in February 2020, and the outbreak stalled domestically within several weeks. Meanwhile, the virus accelerated its spread overseas in a global pandemic.

In the last two months, new domestically transmitted cases have emerged in China amid cold winter weather and a continued trickle of visitors from overseas. The northeastern province of Jilin where Tonghua city is located has become the third-hardest hit region, reporting 273 new confirmed coronavirus cases for January alone.

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Health

Michigan athletics on 2-week pause after outbreak of COVID-19 variant

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CLOSE

Michigan’s athletic department is shutting down for two weeks due to confirmed cases of the B.1.1.7 COVID-19 variant, a department spokesperson confirmed with the Free Press on Saturday night. 

The shutdown will affect all sports, including sports that are currently in season like men’s and women’s basketball, volleyball (which was moved from the fall and ice hockey. The pause will start immediately.

The student journalists at the Michigan Daily were the first to report it.

No changes being made to any other university operations.

“It is our understanding the state did not recommend changes beyond athletics,” university spokesman Rick Fitzgerald told the Free Press.

There are now five cases now confirmed with B.1.1.7, the highly contagious COVID-19 variant, in Washtenaw County. The outbreak traces back to one female student athlete, sources said.

“Canceling competitions is never something we want to do, but with so many unknowns about this variant of COVID-19, we must do everything we can to minimize the spread among student-athletes, coaches, staff, and to the student-athletes at other schools,” said Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel.

More: Wayne County man tests positive for coronavirus variant

More: Washtenaw County urges testing, warns of possible COVID-19 virus variant exposure

University public health officials are working closely with the Washtenaw County Health Department and Michigan Department of Human Health Services on additional mitigation strategies, the athletic department said in a press release.

“The university will be carefully considering additional mitigation measures. There are many unknowns that remain under investigation by U-M, local and state public health officials,” the school’s release said. “No determination has been made on how the pause may impact scheduled games beyond Feb. 7.

The new coronavirus variant transmits more easily and can lead to more positive cases, the health department said.   

“We are watching this situation as closely as possible,” said Dr. Juan Luis Marquez, medical director of the Washtenaw County Health Department. “And we ask everyone to continue to do everything they can to prevent transmission — mask, distance, avoid crowds or gatherings, clean your hands frequently, and follow isolation or quarantine guidance carefully.”

The county is urging people who visited Meijer from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. and Briarwood Mall from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. last Sunday to immediately get tested for the virus. 

The state’s patient zero had a negative coronavirus test two days before she traveled Jan. 3 from the U.K. to the U.S., said Susan Ringler Cerniglia, a spokeswoman for the Washtenaw County Health Department. 

FROM LAST WEEK: Washtenaw County woman is Michigan’s first known case of coronavirus variant

The woman also tested negative for the virus on Jan. 4 and Jan. 6. She got a positive coronavirus test result on Jan. 8 and began isolation on that date. 

Most of the additional seven people who’ve contracted the virus since having close contact with the woman live in connected households, Ringler Cerniglia said, and are also in quarantine.

The B.1.1.7 variant is not more deadly and is not likely to make people more severely sick than other variants of coronavirus. But it is 1.5 times more transmissible, meaning it spreads about 50% faster than other strains of the virus circulating in Michigan.

Late Friday night, the athletic department reported it had 22 COVID-19-positive cases during the week of Jan. 16 to Jan. 22.

This isn’t the first time U-M has had issues with COVID-19. The football team shut its season down early after a COVID-19 outbreak. The shutdown included the cancellation of the rivalry game with Ohio State.

The winter term for students began on Monday, however most students aren’t on campus. The university announced in November it would cancel all housing contracts for the winter term and only allow some students on campus. 

Those who come back to campus will face a crackdown from the university on behaviors related to public health, the school said then.

“Students returning to campus in the winter will encounter a strict, no-tolerance approach to enforcing COVID-19-related policies,” the university said in its announcement. “Depending on the violation, penalties will include automatic probation, university housing contract termination, and removing university recognition for student organizations hosting or participating in social gatherings.”

In-person classes will be limited to those most effectively taught through in-person or required for licensure, the university said.

Free COVID-19 testing will be available 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday at Pioneer High School, 601 W. Stadium Blvd, Ann Arbor. Pre-registration is available but not required. Details: https://www.washtenaw.org/3158/Testing.

Contact Orion Sang at osang@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @orion_sang. Read more on the Michigan Wolverines and sign up for our Wolverines newsletter. The Free Press has started a new digital subscription model. Here’s how you can gain access to our most exclusive Michigan Wolverines content. 



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Health

St. Charles Redmond COVID-19 outbreak traced to patient who tested negative – twice

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Had conditions that made it difficult to wear mask; third test was positive; 33 caregivers, one patient affected

REDMOND, Ore. (KTVZ) – St. Charles Health System’s investigation of a COVID-19 outbreak at its Redmond hospital revealed that the source was a COVID-positive patient, the organization announced late Friday.

The patient — who had underlying health conditions that at times made it difficult to wear a mask—was admitted to St. Charles Redmond on Dec. 31 and was initially tested twice for COVID-19, officials said. Because both tests resulted negative, St. Charles caregivers continued to wear droplet precaution personal protective equipment (PPE).  

On Jan. 6, the patient was tested a third time for COVID-19, and that test resulted positive.  

After performing an investigation with the assistance of Deschutes County Health Services and the Oregon Health Authority, St. Charles’ Infection Prevention team determined the Redmond caregivers’ droplet precaution PPE was overwhelmed by prolonged exposure to the highly symptomatic COVID-positive patient.  

“The important learning from this outbreak is that negative COVID-19 test results are not foolproof,” said Dr. Jeff Absalon, St. Charles’ chief physician executive. “In spite of negative test results, if a patient is highly symptomatic, we will need to treat them as if they are COVID-19 positive and aerosolizing, in which case the higher level of PPE is required.” 

Evidence suggests that COVID-19 tests are most accurate five to seven days after exposure. The virus incubates up to 14 days, taking time to build up in a person’s system. 

To date, one patient and 33 St. Charles caregivers at the Redmond hospital have tested positive for COVID-19. Because the health system began its vaccination campaign Dec. 21, none of the 33 caregivers at the Redmond hospital were fully vaccinated. 

On Friday, the St. Charles Infection Prevention team expects to complete its outreach to patients who may have been at risk of exposure due to the timing of their stay at the Redmond hospital. All current in-patients at the Redmond hospital have been informed that none of them were exposed. 

“We have a strong contact tracing system in place for caregivers that is working to mitigate the spread of COVID-19,” Absalon said. “In the meantime, it’s important to stress that we feel confident our Redmond hospital is a safe place to receive care.” 

The health system has also instituted some changes at the Redmond hospital, including: 

·         Offering COVID-19 testing to all St. Charles Redmond hospital-based caregivers  

·         Asking caregivers to stay home and get tested if they have any symptoms of COVID-19, no matter how mild 

·         Increasing air exchanges to six times per hour 

·         Increasing air filtration to more than the CDC recommendation (+90% filtration at .3 microns) 

·         Instructing caregivers in direct patient care roles to use N95 respirators and eye protection throughout their shift while the outbreak is ongoing 

·         Adding hand sanitizer and cleaning supplies to more locations throughout the facility 

·         Asking caregivers to eat in the cafeteria or on the outside patio rather than in break rooms 

·         Adding maximum capacity signage to all break rooms and conference rooms to ensure physical distancing can be maintained 

·         Temporarily limiting visitors to a higher degree than before  

“This sort of situation isn’t any one person’s fault,” Absalon said. “Everyone is working hard to maintain a safe environment, and as an organization we continue to learn and adjust to improve safety for all.” 

An FAQ about the outbreak is also available on St. Charles’ website. 

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Health

US Scientist With Close Ties To Wuhan Lab Discussed Manipulating Bat-Based Coronaviruses Just Weeks Before Outbreak

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  • Dr. Peter Daszak described how easy it was to manipulate bat-based coronaviruses in an interview filmed just weeks before the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan.
  • Daszak has close ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and reportedly pushed back against a National Institute of Health request that he arrange an outside inspection of the lab.
  • Daszak orchestrated a statement at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic that condemned “conspiracy theories” that the virus did not have a natural origin.
  • Daszak now serves on a World Health Organization panel currently investigating the origins of the pandemic on the ground in China.

A U.S. doctor who is part of the World Health Organization team investigating the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic discussed his work manipulating bat-based coronaviruses in labs just weeks before the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan.

Dr. Peter Daszak, a close associate with China’s premier bat-based coronavirus researcher and a key figure in directing taxpayer funds to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, explained how easy it was to alter coronaviruses during a podcast interview filmed Dec. 9, 2019.

“You can manipulate them in the lab pretty easily,” Daszak said. “Spike protein drives a lot of what happens with the coronavirus. Zoonotic risk. So you can get the sequence, you can build the protein — and we work with Ralph Baric at UNC to do this — and insert the backbone of another virus and do some work in the lab.”

It’s unclear where the coronavirus manipulation Daszak described in the podcast, also known as gain of function research, was conducted. Daszak did not return multiple requests for comment.

Daszak said that manipulating coronaviruses in labs is a useful tool in developing treatments and vaccines for potential future outbreaks, but some virologists say such research is playing with fire.

“The only impact of this work is the creation, in a lab, of a new, non-natural risk,” Rutgers University molecular biologist Richard Ebright told New York magazine.

There’s no evidence suggesting that Baric’s lab at the University of North Carolina had anything to do with COVID-19. However, the high-containment lab was the site of a “near-miss” incident in 2016 after a researcher was bitten by a mouse infected by a lab-created variant of the SARS coronavirus, according to ProPublica.

And Baric told New York magazine that he can’t rule out the possibility that COVID-19 unintentionally leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

“Can you rule out a laboratory escape? The answer in this case is probably not,” Baric said.

WATCH:

Daszak also said in the podcast that he and his team had discovered “over 100 new SARS-related coronaviruses” after seven years of surveilling bats across southern China.

“We’ve even found people with antibodies in Yunnan to SARS-related coronaviruses, so there’s human exposure,” Daszak said. “We’re just beginning another five years’ work to look at cohorts in southern China to see how frequent does spillover happen.”

Chinese researcher Shi Zhengli, known by her colleagues as the “bat lady,” reported in early 2017 that she and her colleagues at the Wuhan Institute of Virology had discovered 11 new strains of SARS-related viruses from horseshoe bats in the Yunnan Province, situated over 1,000 miles away from Wuhan. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Coronavirus Expert Says Virus Could Have Leaked From Wuhan Lab)

Shi told the Scientific American in March that she lost sleep worrying that COVID-19 could have leaked from her lab in Wuhan after first learning of the outbreak in December 2019.

“I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China,” Shi said.

Daszak routed funds from former President Barack Obama’s Predict program and the National Institute of Health to Shi’s bat-surveillance team through his nonprofit, EcoHealth Alliance, according to New York magazine.

Shi contributed to a study published in February 2020 reporting that COVID-19 is 96.2% identical to a viral strain that was detected from one of the Yunnan horseshoe bats.

Former President Donald Trump’s State Department announced on Friday that it had obtained evidence showing that researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick with flu-like symptoms in Fall 2019 prior to the first known cases of COVID-19, a sign that experts have previously stated would be evidence pointing to the theory that the virus unintentionally leaked from the Wuhan lab.

Daszak was a key figure in leading the charge at the onset of the pandemic against the theory that COVID-19 unintentionally leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Daszak orchestrated a statement published in The Lancet medical journal in February, prior to any serious research on the origins of COVID-19, condemning “conspiracy theories” that suggest the virus doesn’t have a natural origin.

A spokesman for Daszak told The Wall Street Journal on Friday that his statement, which was cited by numerous news outlets — and by fact check organizations to censor unwelcome inquiries — during the onset of the pandemic, was meant to protect Chinese scientists.

“The Lancet letter was written during a time in which Chinese scientists were receiving death threats and the letter was intended as a showing of support for them as they were caught between important work trying to stop an outbreak and the crush of online harassment,” Daszak’s spokesman told The Journal.

Daszak is a part of the WHO’s 10-person panel that began investigating the origins of COVID-19 on the ground in China on Thursday.

Daszak obtained a position on the investigative panel despite his previous objection to the NIH to cease funding the Wuhan Institute of Virology until he arranged an outside inspection of the lab.

“I am not trained as a private detective,” Daszak said, according to New York magazine.

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