What is fueling a surge of coronavirus cases in this Kentucky county?
An increase in testing is the main reason for the mounting number of coronavirus cases in Warren County, local officials say, but a COVID-19 outbreak at a chicken-processing facility in a nearby county has played a role.
Many of the workers at the Perdue chicken-processing plant in Ohio County live in Warren County, so their cases, and those of family members they exposed, have been counted there.
Local officials have worked to significantly increase testing availability in Warren County, including setting up test sites in at-risk neighborhoods in Bowling Green so people can walk or take public transit to get checked, officials said.
Kroger planned to offer drive-through testing in the county for three days, but ended up adding five more days because of the demand, said Warren County Judge-Executive Mike Buchanon.
Two local clinics are offering free tests to anyone who wants to be checked, even if they don’t have symptoms.
A total of 6,857 residents had been tested by Wednesday, or 5.25 percent of the county’s population of 130,000, according to Dennis Chaney, facilitator of a local work group set up to deal with the coronavirus pandemic.
Across Kentucky, only 2.7 percent of the population has been tested.
Much of the testing in Warren County took place in the last three weeks as officials pushed to get a better handle on the extent of local cases, Buchanon said Thursday.
The county had 352 COVID-19 cases at the end of April, but that jumped to 492 as of May 7 and 677 as of May 14, according to the Barren River District Health Department.
Gov. Andy Beshear and Dr. Steven Stack, the state health commissioner, have mentioned the increase as they remind Kentucky residents to continue being careful about social distancing.
With the increase, Warren County has the second highest number of cases in the state, behind Jefferson County’s 1,822 but ahead of Fayette County, which had 529 cases as of May 14. Cases at a federal prison have pushed up Fayette County’s total.
Warren County’s rate of cases per capita also was among the highest in Kentucky, behind adjoining Butler County, which had a spike in cases at a nursing home, and Muhlenberg County, where cases at a state prison caused the local total to shoot up.
“The amount of testing is by far the biggest reason” for increased confirmed cases in Bowling Green and Warren County, Buchanon said.
However, he said the outbreak at the Perdue plant in Ohio County has played a role.
Warren County cases associated with the plant would be a significant number, Buchanon said. He did not provide a total.
Buchanon said there also have been positive cases among people who live in Warren County but work at nursing homes in other counties where there have been cases.
“County lines don’t exist for a virus, but they do impact our numbers,” he said.
The Perdue plant employs 1,300 people or more, drawing in workers from several nearby counties, said Ohio County Judge-Executive David Johnston.
Johnston said about 250 employees at the plant have tested positive for coronavirus. Some of those workers live in Warren County, he said.
It takes about 40 minutes to drive from Bowling Green to the plant, which is in Cromwell.
Health officials have traced 73 cases among plant workers who live in the seven-county Green River District Health Department, said Clay Horton, the director. Warren County is not in the district.
Bowling Green Mayor Bruce Wilkerson said he could not confirm if COVID-19 cases among Perdue workers have pushed up Warren County’s total. Many people from the county work elsewhere, he said.
“I don’t know if we’re sending it to them, they’re sending it to us,” he said of the coronavirus.
‘There are definitely patterns here’
Meat-processing plants around the country have been hit with outbreaks of coronavirus, threatening the nation’s supply of chicken, pork and beef as plants closed for cleaning or cut back.
That prompted President Donald Trump to issue an executive order April 28 aimed at keeping meat-processing plants operating.
Horton said the Perdue plant in Ohio County had its first positive case in mid-April. The plant tested all employees on May 6, he said.
Working conditions at meat-processing plants are conducive to spreading COVID-19, Horton said.
The reasons include people working close together on production lines; noise that requires people to yell to be heard, meaning they expel more air; and the nature of the air flow in the facilities, Horton said.
Another risk factor in coronavirus cases at chicken-processing plants is that employees sometimes carpool from other counties to the plant, meaning they’re in close contact for an extended period, Horton said.
The Green River health district also dealt with an outbreak of cases at a Tyson chicken processing plant in Henderson County.
“There are definitely patterns here,” Horton said.
Cleaned ‘top to bottom every 24 hours’
Diana Souder, a spokeswoman for Perdue, said in a statement that the company cleans and sanitizes its production plants in Kentucky and elsewhere “top to bottom every 24 hours,” and that federal inspectors sign off on that work each day before production can start.
The company put extra measures in place beginning in early March, including temperature checks, face masks, social distancing, and partitions between workers where it wasn’t possible to keep people six feet apart.
“Perdue Farms is focused on the health and safety of our associates, and responded swiftly to the threat of COVID-19,” Souder said.
Many employees of the Perdue plant in Ohio County are not native English speakers, according to local officials.
Johnston, the Ohio County judge-executive, said people of 27 different nationalities work at the plant.
Language barriers can make it more difficult to educate people about social distancing guidelines, not just in Warren County but anywhere, local officials said.
Brian “Slim” Nash, a Bowling Green city commissioner and member of the local coronavirus work group, said the city has an international liaison and worked to push out health information in multiple languages.
Testing also is being done in locations designed to reach the international community, he said.
Horton said that in the Green River health district, the first cases of coronavirus were not among immigrants.
“We’re seeing cases among a cross section of backgrounds,” Horton said.
‘We got complacent’
Nash pointed to another factor other than increased testing that he sees behind the jump in cases in Bowling Green and Warren County — lax compliance with social distancing guidelines.
Many people aren’t doing a good job wearing masks and staying six feet away from others, Nash said.
“For us, it is the increased testing but also the behavior,” Nash said.
State Rep. Patti Minter, D Bowling Green, said she thinks some people in the state’s third most populous city let down their guard, increasing potential exposures.
“I think part of it is timing, that this surge is happening in part because we got complacent after a couple of months of seeing other places as hot spots,” Minter said.
Med Center Health, a large regional hospital in Bowling Green, said in a news release issued Wednesday that while more testing accounts for some increase in reported cases, the hospital “is admitting a rising number of COVID-19 patients at its Bowling Green campus which confirms that Warren and surrounding counties are experiencing an increase in the prevalence of the virus.”
The hospital put out the release to announce that Dr. Rebecca Shadowen, who specializes in infectious diseases, travel medicine and health care epidemiology and had been a leader in the local response to the coronavirus, had tested positive and been admitted to the hospital.
A Bowling Green television station reported on May 12 that 95 Med Center Health employees had tested positive for coronavirus since mid-March, though 38 had recovered and returned to work.
Dr. Steven Stack, the state health commissioner, said this week that the state would coordinate sending student health workers to help at Med Center Health.
Chaney, who works at the hospital, said the hospital has enough beds, protective gear for employees and equipment to handle the increase in cases. The arrangement to bring in student health workers is “due to the challenge of having a healthy, available workforce,” Chaney said.
Shadowen, the Med Center Health doctor admitted to the hospital this week, said in the news release that she didn’t believe she’d been exposed at the hospital, but rather contracted the virus through “community acquired exposure,” after an elderly family member received care at home from an infected caregiver.
Shadowen said that as businesses and other public places reopen, it is critical for people to be vigilant about safeguards such as wearing a mask, staying clear of people and washing their hands.
“I cannot emphasize enough that COVID-19 is now widespread in our communities,” she said.
This story was originally published May 15, 2020 at 10:30 AM.
