Officials with Jennie-O Turkey Store said an unspecified number of employees have tested positive for coronavirus at the company’s plant in Melrose. On Tuesday, the company confirmed that employees had tested positive at a Willmar plant.
MELROSE, Minn. — More employees from Jennie-O Turkey Store have tested positive for COVID-19.
This time the cases are located at the Jennie-O processing plant in Melrose.
In an email Wednesday, April 22, officials from Jennie-O said simply, “We can confirm we have had team members test positive for COVID-19 at our Melrose facility.”
The company is not reporting the number of individual cases “as we have found that the situations in our communities are changing daily,” according to the statement.
The Melrose facility, which employs about 700 individuals, processes whole turkeys and value-added products.
The report of these latest cases follows news Tuesday that an unspecified number of employees had tested positive for coronavirus at the Willmar Jennie-O processing plant located on Willmar Avenue. The company has seven total processing plants, including two in Willmar.
According to a company spokesperson, measures that were implemented at the Willmar facilities, such as quarantining affected individuals and interviewing and quarantining people with whom they were in contact, have also been implemented at the Melrose plant.
“All impacted team members continue to receive 100 percent of pay and benefits while they are away from work,” according to a company statement.
Other precautionary steps include taking daily temperatures of employees, providing face masks, having nurses on site and doing extra sanitization of facilities.
Kandiyohi County currently has three confirmed cases of COVID-19, according to Minnesota Department of Health data.
Stearns County, where the Melrose plant is located, currently has 20 confirmed cases of COVID-19.
The county-by-county data are based on a person’s county of residence after the department has completed a case interview.
