<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2020/8/1597689046145.jpeg" alt=" At least three workers at National Beef in Dodge City have died due to COVID-19. In Kansas, 17 meatpacking plant workers have died. Corinne Boyer / Kansas News Service" />
 <figcaption> At least three workers at National Beef in Dodge City have died due to COVID-19. In Kansas, 17 meatpacking plant workers have died. Corinne Boyer / Kansas News Service</figcaption>
 </figure>By CORINNE BOYER <a href="https://www.hppr.org/post/emails-show-kansas-agencies-helped-keep-meatpacking-plants-open-despite-concerns-about">Kansas News Service</a>GARDEN CITY — In mid-May, Finney County’s 
top public health physician sent an email to state health officials 
repeating worries she’d made clear a month earlier to her local 
colleagues.Finney County Health Department Medical Director 
Lindsay Byrnes warned that the coronavirus outbreak at the local 
meatpacking plant continued to put workers there, and the surrounding 
community, at risk.The factory-scale slaughterhouses that employ
 thousands of people — largely immigrants whose close-quarters jobs fuel
 the economy of southwest Kansas — had already become COVID-19 hotspots.
 Three workers in nearby Dodge City had died.Byrnes, an 
internist and pediatrician with a master’s degree in public health, said
 the Tyson Fresh Meats plant in her hometown of Holcomb, Kansas, just 
outside Garden City, needed to do more.<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2020/8/1597689100405.jpeg" alt=" Finney County, Kansas is home to a Tyson Fresh Meats packing plant. Credit Corinne Boyer / Kansas News Service" />
 <figcaption> Finney County, Kansas is home to a Tyson Fresh Meats packing plant. Credit Corinne Boyer / Kansas News Service</figcaption>
 </figure>“The numbers of infected and the pattern of spread makes it very 
clear that transmission was occurring there weeks ago, and due to the 
natural course of disease, is now evidenced in those who are sick, 
hospitalized and dying in my community,” Byrnes said in an email to the 
Kansas Department of Health and Environment.“Whatever the plant 
is doing now is too little too late,” the email continued, “but 
hopefully they will keep up their practices.”Despite worker 
complaints to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, massive
 outbreaks, deaths and input from a local doctor, Kansas meatpacking 
plants never shut down.Months later, case numbers, clusters and deaths have continued to climb.The
 Kansas News Service received OSHA logs through a Freedom of Information
 Act request. Through a Kansas Open Records Act request, the news 
service got emails between the Kansas Department of Health and 
Environment and local health departments.Those 780 emails showed
 that state officials played a role in keeping meatpacking plants open 
before President Donald Trump’s executive order mandating that plants 
continue operating.In fact, the state’s guidelines said that even if workers had knowingly come in contact with someone who had the disease, <a href="https://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article242852011.html">they could still work</a> as long as they were asymptomatic and took precautions such as wearing masks.As
 cases of the virus began showing up in Kansas in March, the state’s 
agriculture department said in an email it had no plans to close packing
 plants.“Our priority is to keep facilities functioning across 
the state so that the food supply chain is not interrupted,” spokeswoman
 Heather Landsdowne wrote. “At this point, we see no indication that 
these plants will be directed to shut down operations.”In April,
 meatpacking plant employees filed complaints with OSHA about exposure 
to the coronavirus on the job in Lyon and Ford counties.A 
complaint from an employee at Tyson Fresh Meats in Emporia said, 
“Employees are not protected from health hazards associated with the 
Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19).” It continued, “the employer has 
not implemented all feasible engineering and administrative controls as 
outlined in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 
guidelines.”By the end of the month, one worker in Dodge City 
had died from COVID-19. Within two weeks, two more workers at the 
meatpacking hub had died from the virus.As of August 14, Kansas 
packing plants have reported 3,287 cases, 17 deaths and 16 cluster 
outbreaks. Plants are the largest source of outbreaks in the state. 
They’ve reported more than double the number of cases tied to long-term 
care facilities — the second largest source.KDHE and Gov. Laura Kelly have publicly said Kansas didn’t have to close any plants. On a July 14 visit to&nbsp;Brookover Feed Yard in Garden City, Kelly said the state took an “aggressive response” to outbreaks in packing plants.<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2020/8/1597689144518.jpeg" alt=" Gov. Laura Kelly visited Brookover Feed Yard in Garden City on July 14. Credit Corinne Boyer / Kansas News Service" />
 <figcaption> Gov. Laura Kelly visited Brookover Feed Yard in Garden City on July 14. Credit Corinne Boyer / Kansas News Service</figcaption>
 </figure>“We called in the CDC. They brought in a SWAT team of contract 
tracers, testing and engineering types to figure out how we could set up
 our plants, so that they were safe to work in,” Kelly said.&nbsp;The state also set up housing so workers could quarantine “to keep their families safe.”Kelly
 was not available for an interview for this story. In an email, the 
governor’s spokeswoman Lauren Fitzgerald said: “The guidance our state 
issued put restrictions in place, while minimizing risk within the work 
environment. This included requirements for engineering and 
administrative controls that would allow the plants to stay open.”In fact, the plants installed plastic shields between workstations, started requiring masks and employee temperature checks.When the CDC visited <a href="https://www.coronavirus.kdheks.gov/DocumentCenter/View/1240/CDC-KDHE-Cargill-Memo-PDF---5-10-20">Cargill</a>, two <a href="https://www.coronavirus.kdheks.gov/DocumentCenter/View/1242/CDC-KDHE-Tyson-Memo-PDF---5-10-20">Tyson</a> locations in Lyon and Finney counties and two <a href="https://www.coronavirus.kdheks.gov/DocumentCenter/View/1241/CDC-KDHE-National-Beef-PDF---5-10-20">National Beef</a>
 locations in Ford and Seward counties in late April, about 2,500 
workers were out. The missing employees had tested positive, were in 
quarantine or simply hadn’t shown up.In a May interview with WBUR’s Here &amp; Now, KDHE Secretary Lee Norman said the state had the power to shut down the plants.“We
 have that statutory authority in the state of Kansas that can be done 
by a local health officer in that county, and we could override the 
local health officer and shut down the production in these packing 
plants,” Norman said. “That has not been necessary to do, fortunately.”Norman
 was unavailable for an interview. KDHE spokeswoman Kristi Zears said in
 an email that the CDC released guidance and recommendations for packing
 plants shortly before the CDC and National Institute for Occupational 
Safety and Health (NIOSH) visited plants.“The visit was for 
technical assistance and not regulatory/inspection,” Zears said. “KDHE 
continues to work with meat packing plants, large and small, to make 
recommendations for controls they can put in place to limit the spread 
of COVID-19 in their facilities.”On April 15, Byrnes sent an 
email to Finney County employees after the first case of the virus was 
found at Tyson. The county announced multiple cases and community spread
 at the plant on April 22.“Given the experience of other 
communities with cases and subsequent large clusters located in meat 
packing plants, it seems obvious to me that we take aggressive action,” 
Byrnes wrote. “I am in favor of closing the plant to allow for broad 
testing and cleaning.”In the same mid-April email, Byrnes wrote 
that she had discussed the situation with the state’s health agency, but
 an agency employee didn’t think a closure was necessary.In an August interview, Byrnes said that’s how she felt at the time.“Now
 four months later, I can probably say something different. I think at 
the time I felt very strongly. They needed to be shut down,” she said. 
“Temporarily, like I said, just try and get as many sick people out of 
there as we could and stop the transmission.”Byrnes said that in her conversations with KDHE, the agency’s focus was on public health.Now she isn’t sure that the plants should have been shut down.“I
 don’t know,” she said. “We had a really large outbreak here … I feel 10
 deaths is too many deaths. I do. It was a very significant hit to our 
community.”Corinne Boyer covers western Kansas for High 
Plains Public Radio and the Kansas News Service. You can follow her on 
Twitter @corinne_boyer.

Despite virus concerns, Kan. agencies helped keep packing plants open