COVID-19 cases among Amy's Kitchen employees not linked to an outbreak

Despite 10 cases at Amy's Kitchen since February, the cases have not been linked to transmission at the workplace.

Case away from 500 cases.

Josephine county reportedmispla.

Jackson county public health says today no such outbreak exists at the white city company that prepares organic frozen foods.

Newswatch 12 investigated this report to verify the facts with the health department, oregon health authority and amy's kitchen headquarters.

Amy's kitchen says while ten employees in its white city facility tested positive for covid-19, "in no instance has the transmission been traced to an occurrence within the plant."

It also says these cases happened at different times.

Oregon health authority lists workplace outbreaks, and its new list today does ánotá include amy's kitchen.

Newswatch 12 reached out to amy's kitchen which released this statement - saying that upon receiving notification that an employee is sick, it works closely with jackson county health officials to "conduct a thorough investigation, including detailed contact tracing, and take every precaution necessary to prevent any spread among our employees."

You can read amy's kitchen's full statement at k-d-r-v.com.

Joining us now to discuss local trends and concerns dr. jim shames, the jackson county public health.

Thanks again for being with us doctor.

I'm glad to be here as those numbers continue to go up.

Are we learning any more about the way people are being infected or how they're being infected?

Oh, we're, we're learning a lot every day.

I mean, i, i, i've just been thinking lately about how we're sort of getting our feet under us.

You know, where we're much more experienced on contact tracing and case investigation.

And, uh, so yes, that's not to say that we've solved this problem, but, but i do think we have experienced staff, uh, we're working well and, and in fact, we've kind of leveled off.

Uh, such that we're really kind of in a plateau.

We haven't really seen a steady increase in cases, uh, or rather the trend is not increased.

Obviously every day we have more cases, but what the numbers are, are staying about the same over the last week or so.

And i certainly hope that we can continue that trend and, or, you know, start moving down in terms of cases per day.

Have we had any workplace outbreaks get in jackson county other than the one at harry and david?

Yeah.

So i think everybody needs to understand that the larger the employer, the more likely you are to have it cases at your site of business stands to reason.

If a place like a sundae employs thousands and thousands of people, some of their workers, and they become positive.

The question in terms of an outbreak is, are they, are they sharing the disease at work?

And that's sometimes difficult to determine, and sometimes there's a little of that.

But mostly, it might just be, people are passing the disease on, in their household.

And they're coming to work to answer your question, uh, in terms of announcing outbreaks, the state does that when an employer has more than 30 employees and they have more than five cases associated with an outbreak, and then they announced.

And, but prior to that, unless we think the public is endangered.

I mean, we would certainly announce information for the public and keep itself safe.

But if we don't do that, it's because we don't believe there's danger to the public.

You did mention that our case has continued to increase is that as a result of increased testing, well, increased testing does help us get an idea of sort of what we're dealing with.

But, um, so i mean, obviously.

Yeah, so we didn't test anybody.

We wouldn't know we have any in cases, but, um, it's not, it's not creating the trend.

Our percentage of positive cases is significantly more than it was when we were doing less testing.

Um, so that is to say we're testing more people and there's more disease in our community.

There's no downside the testing, uh, that i can see.

I know at the beginning of when we started tabulating this, we had the presumptive case numbers and the confirmed case numbers.

Why are those two distinct numbers relevant?

I'm not sure how relevant they really are.

Um, our testing is, is, uh, not as accurate as we'd like it to be.

So we miss a certain number of actual cases.

Even when a person's test comes back negative.

So for example, if, uh, if i had contact with somebody who we knew to be positive and i have all the symptoms of covid, i'm going to be treated as positive case.

Even if my test is negative, i'm going to be presumed to be, cause the test is imperfect.

You know, walks like a duck quacks, like a duck, it looks