About 100 workers at the Huntingburg Farbest Turkey processing plant have tested positive for the coronavirus.
Farbest Foods had the nearly 600 workers at its Huntingburg plant tested on Friday and the company was working Monday and today to notify healthy employees on when to return. The plant was closed yesterday and today.
Ted Seger, president of the Jasper-based company said in a statement that tests confirmed 101 of the Farbest workers as infected with COVID-19 but without symptoms, while 23 tests were pending verification. The Farbest cases have fueled 91 new confirmed coronavirus infections since Friday that have more than doubled the total number of cases to 161 in Dubois County.
State health commissioner Kris Box says the department is “intimately engaged” in testing employees at the plant. She says state and local health departments will be tracking whether the virus spreads beyond Farbest workers.
The Daviess County Health Department on Monday reported that 11 new cases of COVID-19 in the county from Friday to Monday stem from the positive cases at Farbest Foods in Huntingburg. As another step for reopening the state is slated to start this coming week, state health officials say they are collaborating with the local Health Departments in our region assessing whether those counties need to wait before lifting any more restrictions or reimpose the ones that were lifted two weeks ago. In the thick of of the similar outbreak at a pork processing plant in Cass County, Governor Eric Holcomb ordered the lifting of restrictions be delayed for an additional two weeks while most of the state started reopening.
