COVID-19 safety steps urged for Fresno farmworkers. Will it protect food supply chain?
To slow the coronavirus’ spread in the agricultural industry, Fresno County officials launched new safety guidelines to protect farmworkers.
Among the slew of recommendations announced Wednesday, the Fresno County Health Department wants employers to implement screening and testing guidelines for farmworkers, advising that at least 10% of their employees get tested every two weeks. The goal is to weed out workers who may be COVID-19 positive but asymptomatic and prevent a super spreader event, they said.
The county becomes one of the first in the state to develop a preventive testing plan that workplaces can use to protect farmworkers, which county health officials hope will also help keep agricultural facilities open.
The guidelines are an extra measure meant to reinforce existing health safety protocols and regulations laid out by state and federal officials.
“We’re choosing employees that have no symptoms because if you have symptoms, employees should be going home immediately,” said Dr. Trinidad Solis, who coordinates the county’s COVID-19 Equity Project. “It’s for those who don’t have symptoms in order to catch up and certainly because as we know, with COVID, you can not have symptoms and be spreading it.”
The guidelines are separated into three categories: Employee safety and hygiene, employer-provided transportation safety, and assigning a COVID-19 worksite coordinator who can help the facility create and implement a COVID-19 safety plan.
Agricultural workers in California’s central San Joaquin Valley have faced some of the most challenging hardships due to the coronavirus pandemic, suffering greater economic losses and getting sick and dying at higher rates.
Public health experts blame poor and clustered working conditions, lack of access to healthcare and economic relief, and living in cramped households as some of the reasons why farmworkers are falling victim to COVID-19.
If they get sick at the workplace, they may likely infect family members and others in the community as well, they said. That’s why the county is strongly encouraging employers to follow the guidelines despite them not being mandatory.
“We are strongly encouraging employers to look at this and help guide their daily business practices,” Solis said. “A lot of this is being done, but we want to reinforce this as much as we can.”
Fresno County is among the top crop-producing regions in the U.S., with more than 70,000 farmworkers on the job at any given time, county leaders said at Wednesday’s meeting. The heavily Latino community suffers from significant health disparities, increasing their risk of developing severe complications from the virus.
With the pandemic taking a heavy toll on farmworkers and their communities, county leaders said more needs to be done to secure the country’s food supply chain and protect the vital workforce’s health and safety.
They also recommend employers appoint a COVID-19 workplace coordinator to create a prevention plan that follows the state’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s guidelines.
Fresno County Farm Bureau CEO Ryan Jacobsen supports the recommendations, but he said that the rules apply differently to various sectors of the farm industry.
For the agricultural workers who predominantly work outside, many recommendations can be done relatively easily, he said, because individuals are separated, and the risk of transmission is much lower. But when the bulk of the work is done indoors, such as in a food processing facility, he said safety protocols need to increase significantly.
“A lot of it has been implemented already...any operation wants to make sure that they have a workforce that’s healthy and available,” he said. “But the most important thing to recognize here is that there’s varying degrees of risk.”
Coronavirus testing remains a top concern
County officials have set up COVID-19 testing sites in rural areas for agriculture workers, and they are also working with the Farm Bureau and agricultural facilities to arrange worksite testing. Employers can also send workers to federally qualified testing centers to get tested for free.
But even with the enhanced guidelines, testing remains a top concern. For some farmworkers and their communities, access to testing remains too remote. Some never find out that a testing event is happening until it’s too late.
And for those who do get tested, receiving results in time continues to be an ongoing problem, he said.
“Ultimately, the biggest concern we have right now is the turnaround time for tests,” Jacobsen said. “It’s still taking a significant amount of time to get results back.”
Some workers don’t get their results for at least seven to 10 days, far past the virus’ incubation time and contagious period. That could be a result of the high volume of tests and new cases plaguing the region, Jacobsen added.
This week, the U.S. began rolling out the first doses of a coronavirus vaccine to hospital workers and long term living facilities nationwide. Now that the vaccine is available, Jacobsen said he supports prioritizing farmworkers and other essential workers next.
Without it, experts say, the virus will continue to ravage the community and jeopardize the food distribution system.
“The vaccine is something that is extraordinarily important,” Jacobsen said. “There’s a fairly high level of concern around the farm employee group about getting this vaccine. That necessitates education ... to make sure people understand that there is a significant benefit to getting vaccinated.”
This story was originally published December 17, 2020 at 5:00 AM.