Elon Musk’s decision to reopen the Tesla Bay Area production plant last May despite county lock-in orders was followed by more than 100 COVID-19 cases at the plant, according to recently released data. After repeatedly playing against local blocking measures, Tesla’s CEO famously declared in May, when coronavirus cases were spreading across the country, that the company would “restart production today against county rules of Alameda “. The Fremont plant, with about 10,000 employees, had reported about 10 cases of the virus that month, but the number of cases grew steadily thereafter, to 125 in December, according to county health data released Friday by the website. PlainSite transparency.
The number of cases rose to 19 in June and then rose to 58 in July before reaching 86 in August, according to the data. Several employees at the plant had protested last summer after they said employees who accepted the company’s offer to stay home for fears of COVID were fired in apparent retaliation. Musk himself has been subjected to repeated incidents for dismissing the severity of the virus, and famously predicted last March that the nation would have “near-zero” cases in April. On Friday, even when data revealed an increase in cases at the Fremont plant, he returned to participate, unfoundedly suggesting on Twitter that the second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine should not be relied upon.
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