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Wilkes County Plans More Testing After COVID-19 Outbreak At Tyson Plant

The Tyson Foods plant in Wilkesboro, North Carolina. KERI BROWN/WFDD

COVID-19 cases in Wilkes County have spiked dramatically within the past two weeks — over 130 reported as of Tuesday. Local officials say many of them are coming from the Tyson Foods Processing Plant. The numbers are expected to grow as county officials conduct random tests there.

The county health department and state officials are working with Tyson to better understand the scope of the outbreak. They tested around 200 employees on Monday. Those results are expected back in the next few days.

Wilkes County Manager John Yates says more testing is being planned in the community.

We're a little bit overwhelmed because of the number right now, but our health department is working hard and we've partnered with the school system,” says Yates. ”We're bringing in school nurses to do contact tracing, and we're also working with Walmart and the state to do more tests for citizens that want to be tested.”

Tyson is like a lot of others in the industry putting safety measures into place. That includes relaxing attendance policies to encourage sick workers to stay home, temperature checks, and dividers between workstations.

But labor advocates say it's not enough protection and action was slow to implement, and they say workers are afraid.

The company is Wilkes County's largest employer with more than 2,000 workers at the chicken processing facility in Wilkesboro.

According to an update from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services on Tuesday, there are 899 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in 20 outbreaks at meat processing plants in the following North Carolina counties: Bertie, Bladen, Chatham, Duplin, Lee, Lenoir, Richmond, Robeson, Sampson, Union, Wilkes, and Wilson.

*Follow WFDD's Keri Brown on Twitter @kerib_news

Keri Brown is a multi-award winning reporter and host at 88.5 WFDD. She has been honored with two regional Edward R. Murrow awards for her stories about coal ash, and was named the 2015 radio reporter of the year by the Radio Television Digital News Association of the Carolinas (RTDNAC).Although she covers a variety of topics, her beats are environmental and education reporting.Keri comes to the Triad from West Virginia Public Broadcasting, where she served as the Chief Bureau Reporter for the Northern Panhandle. She produced stories for the state's Public Television and Radio programs and was honored by the West Virginia Associated Press Broadcasters Association for her feature and enterprise reporting.She also served as an adjunct instructor at Wheeling Jesuit University and Bethany College in West Virginia. She worked with the Center for Educational Technologies in Wheeling, WV, and other NASA centers across the country to develop several stories about the use of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) concepts in the classroom.Keri's journalism career began at WTRF-TV 7 in Wheeling. She worked in several roles at the station, including the head assignment editor. She also was a field producer and assignment manager at WPGH-TV Fox 53 in Pittsburgh.Keri is a graduate of Ohio University. When she's not in the studio or working on a story, she enjoys watching college football with her family, cooking, and traveling.Keri is always looking for another great story idea, so please share them with her. You can follow her on Twitter @kerib_news.

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