Fifty employees of the Westvlees meat processing company in Staden are infected with the coronavirus, mayor Francesco Vanderjeugd (Open Vld) announced on Thursday. As of Wednesday, 16 others had already tested positive.
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More than 200 Westvlees staff were placed in quarantine on Wednesday after the detection of an outbreak of coronavirus contamination in this West Flanders company. Of the 225 employees quarantined, 193 have been tested and 164 results are known, including 50 positive.
The other employees will be tested on Friday. Tests will also be carried out in other departments of the company, which has a total of 850 people.
The local authorities do not yet have the location of the domicile of the 50 positive cases. “It is possible that there are many who live in France,” said Francesco Vabderjeugd. He will meet with his counterparts in the region on Friday to discuss it. This information could lead to locally strengthening measures against the coronavirus.
Of the 6 positive cases initially reported, two concerned cross-border workers from France, the mayor said on Wednesday.
He also specified that he had already contacted the Romanian consul concerning possible contamination of nationals of this country working at the slaughterhouse.
Sources of contamination have appeared since the start of the pandemic in slaughterhouses in different countries, such as in Germany, France or the United States. Experts still have difficulty understanding the reasons for these contaminations, undoubtedly linked to overcrowding, but perhaps also to cold and ventilation conditions specific to these factories.
As of May, more than 90 cases had been discovered at a facility in Lower Saxony, Germany.
Westvlees presents itself as one of the most important European producers of fresh and prepared pork. The company processes 1.4 million pigs per year into more than 140,000 tonnes of pork and has customers in 50 countries. The cutting activity should continue at other company sites than Staden, a company official said on Wednesday.
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