Looking to access Covid vaccines, big business like Tyson Foods have nothing better than many Americans. The tight supply leaves them mostly waiting.
The meat processing company has received its largest vaccine allocation this week and is making vaccines for workers at its Missouri, Illinois and Virginia plants. But they are only 1,000 doses in the three states.
Executives say this month they have obtained 25 to 50 doses at a time to inoculate occupational health personnel and workers over 65
“We don’t rule out any chance of getting the vaccine for our team members,” said Tom Brower, Tyson’s senior vice president of health and safety.
However, opportunities have been limited. With 120,000 workers spread across two dozen states, the company has not been able to access supplies close enough to have large-scale vaccination clinics.
“We come to these jurisdictions by asking, you know, 1,000 or 1,500 doses,” said Dr. Daniel Castillo, chief physician at Matrix Medical Network, Tyson’s occupational health provider that has performed on-site testing. the butcher.
Even in states that now offer access to the inoculation of essential workers, the uncertainty of vaccine supply leaves big employers hanging; local health departments cannot provide them with a timeline for when they will have access.
“They don’t know, going in sometimes how much they’re going to have to really allocate to us. And so that’s part of the challenge: not having that line of sight,” Castillo said.
Tyson and rival rival JBS and Smithfield Foods have been the target of widespread outbreaks of Covid at its facilities at the start of the pandemic. At the Tyson Pork Processing Plant in Iowa, managers were fired after an investigation found they had bet on how many workers would get sick. Congress has launched an investigation into sausage safety slip. Tyson and the other companies are collaborating with the probe.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, more than 12,500 Tyson workers have been infected with the coronavirus, according to the Food & Environment Reporting Network. Tyson will not confirm the figures, but says the Covid-19 protocols they have undertaken have kept workers safe.
The company has worked with Matrix Medical to provide in situ testing to contain possible outbreaks and has instituted safety measures such as plastic partitions to reduce potential exposure to production lines. Over the past year, they have also expanded on-site health clinics and launched a pilot program to provide free primary care services as part of a long-term initiative to improve the overall health of workers.
While several companies offer cash bonuses to encourage workers to get the vaccine, Tyson has opted for persuasion, through an educational campaign to combat the hesitation of its workers, mostly Latinos and African Americans.
“We didn’t want to take the vaccine application approach. We want to help team members make well-informed decisions about their own health care and safety,” Brower said.
He’s not the only big businessman coming out empty in the competition to track vaccine doses. Amazon, Walmart and others are pressuring federal and state officials to facilitate access to vaccines in the workplace and even contact vaccine manufacturers to supply them, with little success so far.
“If every avenue leads to the same place, which is a scarce vaccine, no matter the avenue, it will be a challenge,” Castillo said.
Companies don’t want to be seen trying to jump the line; they argue that they can remove system pressure for people by vaccinating their large employee populations. Meanwhile, Tyson now gives his workers four hours of rest to receive a vaccine elsewhere, if they can get an appointment.