Testing now underway for Tyson employees

The Cass County Health Department confirmed Thursday that testing for all employees at Tyson Foods is underway.

Tyson Foods in Logansport will be shutting down for about two weeks. On Wednesday, officials said 146 employees have tested positive for the novel cornonavirus.

When reached for comment, the Cass County Health Department said that a local update would not be sent Thursday because the department is currently fully engaged in the testing onsite at the Tyson plant. Usually, the Cass County Health Department releases data that are more up to date than that of the Indiana State Health Department's daily updates.

Tyson also shut down a plant in Waterloo, Iowa, after keeping it open "over the objections of alarmed local officials," according to the Associated Press.

Cass County's number of reported positive tests skyrocketed this week, hitting 199 cases confirmed by the ISHD on Thursday.

Testing at the Logansport plant will be done by shifts with appointments for the employees. The testing will not include any family members of Tyson employees.

During his daily press briefing on Thursday, Gov. Eric Holcomb answered questions about the Logansport Plant.

"The company has made those changes necessary but ... we want to make sure that folks feel comfortable going back to work. The company is in 110% agreement with that so we will do just that," Holcomb said.

Indiana State Health Commissioner Dr. Kristina Box also make comments regarding the Logansport facility during the briefing.

"There was, in terms of total amount, about 160 individuals that are positive from that plant," she said. "That number changes a little bit -- it was 140 yesterday, I believe. That's out of 2,100 individuals so, at the time, there was like 5% of the individuals that were actually infected at that plant. Even after they closed and they cleaned, put up dividers and made sure that there was the ability to socially distance, [there was] still just a lot of discomfort with individuals that were asymptomatic going back to work. So we're actually out there with them today and tomorrow and we'll be testing all individuals at the plant with the hope that negative individuals would be able to return to work by the beginning of [next] week.

For weeks, Holcomb and Box have urged Hoosiers to hunker down and self-isolate to reduce the spread of the highly contagious coronavirus.

As talk transitions to reopening and how the state will navigate the financial fallout, public health officials emphasize the importance of widespread testing and contact tracing. Box said that contact tracing, or analyzing people who may have had contact with an infected person, relied heavily on that first positive test.

"My ask, at this time, is for physicians and health care providers across the state to be able to test individuals that are sick," Box said. "And they don't have to have underlying conditions -- they don't have to work at a long-term care facility."

After he was tested for the coronavirus Thursday at Aria Diagnostics, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Woody Myers, a former state health commissioner, said Indiana should expand testing before reopening the economy.

"I'm not one of the more symptomatic people ... but I thought it would be a good idea" to be tested, Myers said Thursday. "We want to make sure that as testing ramps up, it ramps up in all communities throughout the state -- not just in the more affluent communities but certainly in urban areas of the state and rural."

Myers, who is a physician, said that though the state is reported to have over 70,000 tests, just 2,000 Hoosiers are being tested daily. He said the state should test 10,000 people daily and should remove testing barriers, such as shortages of swabs, lack of insurance and poor communication about testing sites.

While some Hoosiers have called for reopening the economy and some Southern states have loosened restrictions, Myers urged caution in Indiana.

"Those restrictions are very important because that's causing our curve to be flattened. Unless and until we can ramp up testing ... I would hold back on opening up the economy," Myers said. "Most of the public health experts say you need to have a downswing of at least two weeks before you start taking little steps. We're not there yet."

Myers criticized the state for not releasing the names of specific nursing homes with COVID-19 infections and not providing more information on state prisons.

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