Santa Clara County COVID data reveals outbreaks in more than 250 workplaces

San Jose — Santa Clara County has recorded more than 250 workplace coronavirus outbreaks in 2020 and 2021, with new data showing. It shows the most comprehensive picture of how the virus spread to critical businesses during peak pandemics.

The outbreak affects almost every sector, including retailers and grocery stores, restaurants, construction sites, manufacturing and food processing plants, warehouses, California Highway Patrol, Calfire, San Jose City, San Jose Police Station and other public institutions. I gave it. Valley Transportation Bureau.

Records provided by the county in response to a public record request from the Bay Area newsgroup show the spread of the virus in the Bay Area’s largest county, to critical workers who could not stay home as a pandemic. Torn the community emphasizing disproportionate impact.

Overall, the county recorded 264 outbreaks between June 2020 and April 2021. This includes 68 outbreaks in retail and grocery stores. 45 outbreaks at construction sites. There were also 49 outbreaks in factories and other manufacturing facilities. This includes 51 on the Olympus America site, the largest recorded outbreak in the county.

Dr. George Han, Deputy Public Health Officer at the county, shows how the virus tends to spread among vulnerable community members who lived and worked together.

“Generally, outbreaks are expected to occur in crowded, poorly ventilated indoor spaces,” Han said. “Our data is consistent with medical and public health literature …. Our pattern is not unique.”

Santa Clara County has required employers to report COVID-19 since June last year, but details of workplace outbreaks in the county have not been released so far. The record does not include outbreak case numbers that affected less than 11 people. It also does not include outbreaks in schools or universities, or in collective living environments such as prisons and nursing homes.

The county provided the data to the news agency in late June, more than two months after the request for information in public records, and after the investigation was published. Details how the state and many local health departments have declined Disclosure of workplace outbreak data, despite legislation aimed at increasing transparency regarding their outbreaks.

Under that law, AB 685, the Bay Area Newsgroup requested workplace outbreak data from all 58 counties and three cities with their own regional health departments. So far, 22 have provided response records. Four claimed no outbreaks and five requested additional time to respond.

The 17 counties flatly refused to provide records, arguing that nominating an employer who reported the outbreak was without evidence that individual employees were at risk of being identified. Despite numerous reminders, 12 did not respond. (San Bernardino County has not received the initial request and states that it is currently looking for records.)

When asked why Santa Clara County did not publish workplace outbreak data, county executive Jeff Smith said he believed that employers would warn workers about the infection without external pressure. ..

“We thought that notifications to employees were being processed by our employers, so we decided to notify the general public when it became clear that a particular business had a particular reason for being at higher risk than usual. We focused on it, “says Smith.

“I’m not saying it’s logical,” he added. “We trusted too much.”

The county is currently planning to post the data on its website, Smith said.

What the record shows

Records confirm the impact of COVID-19 on publicly-facing workers in the county, especially those in grocery stores and retail stores. For example, Costco reported 11 outbreaks at that location in Santa Clara County, while Target reported eight.

In a brief statement, the target spokesperson confirmed that the workers were positive in the San Jose region, but “at that time there was no significant difference from the rest of the country.” Costco did not respond to requests for comment.

The county also recorded at least two outbreaks at warehousing and delivery companies, and UPS and FedEx reported 42 and 33 cases at the San Jose facility this winter, respectively.

A FedEx spokesperson said their “records do not match county data,” but did not explain how. UPS did not respond to the request for comment. Olympus America, which recorded the largest outbreak in the county, also declined to request comment.

Construction is also one of the industries most hit by the outbreak of COVID, reflecting what public health experts have said is a national trend. For example, more than 32 cases were reported at three Google construction sites in Mountain View and Sunnyvale. 19 cases Site to build a multi-family house Milpitas unit.

Gary Filizetti, president of Devcon Construction, one of the mountain view sites and Sunnyvale site contractor, is positive after workers are told to arrive at work, check their temperature, and go home to take a test. Said that a case of Some may have commute to work together, but Philizetti said neither project had spread further among hundreds of workers.

“That’s why we set up a test protocol so people can work in a safe environment,” he said. “We feel social responsibility.”

The construction sector was one of the first to reopen after the first shelter-in-place was ordered in the Bay Area last spring. After intense lobbying by the industry, Santa Clara County allowed most construction work to resume during the initial reopening. “I wish I had closed the construction for a long time,” Smith said, based on the number of subsequent occurrences at the construction site.

Dr. John Swartzberg, an epidemiologist and emeritus professor of the UC Berkeley-UCF Joint Health Program, who reviewed the county data, said the industry-wide pattern was “fully reasonable” given national trends. Stated.Recent University of California, San Francisco Research We have identified certain California industries, including food and agriculture, transportation and logistics, and manufacturing, associated with worker overmortality during a pandemic.

“Someone at the cashier knows how many people God knows on a particular day,” Swartsburg said. “What they have in common is the combination of low-paying work and a lot of contact with the general public, so there is an ongoing risk.”

Jim Araby, director of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 5 strategic campaign, said even Santa Clara County records are likely to underestimate the effects of the virus on grocery store, food service, and warehouse employees. thinking about. Elsewhere not on the county list.

“With a more comprehensive set of data points, we could have had a stronger argument that we needed to enforce the agreed standards more rigorously,” Araby said. .. “Hundreds of workers have died nationwide.”

Information on outbreaks in the workplace should have made health policy decisions faster and more transparent, he said.

“If you don’t know where it’s happening, you can’t fight the public health crisis,” Araby said. “How do you get a different response if a variant occurs and you don’t have the correct data and information about what happened last time?”

Occurrence data available at work in Santa Clara County Here..