COVID-19 Cases Up Sharply Among Grocery Store, Pharmacy Workers

Speaker 1: 00:00 While healthcare workers and people living in nursing homes and assisted living facilities are among the first to get the vaccine COVID cases have sharply increased in another group of people, grocery and pharmacy workers, people whose jobs are essential, but have not been given first priority for the vaccine KPBS reporter max Rivlin Adler reports cases among this group have more than tripled since December. And they are setting records daily. Max, welcome to the show. Good to be here. So how bad are cases among grocery store and pharmacy workers? Speaker 2: 00:34 So according to information I got from the union representing many grocery store pharmacy workers, and a few other locations across the County. Uh, the numbers have gone up a tremendous amount. So in November 82 workers had tested positive for COVID-19 by December. That number had exploded to 404. And now this is information as of yesterday. So that was 11 days into January, 152 cases have been reported. And these comes from, uh, 97 different union work sites. Speaker 1: 01:04 What's driving the spike in these cases. Speaker 2: 01:08 It seems as though this is just following the general trend among the County, just basically because the spread has gone so widespread people can be bringing it in from home. They could be getting it at work. But the thing that they're trying to fight against is of course spreading it to customers that among one another, at this point, just giving the general widespread nature of COVID-19 in San Diego County. It's really tough to nail down exactly where people are getting sick. Speaker 1: 01:34 Hmm. So what are supermarkets and pharmacies doing then to protect employees? Speaker 2: 01:39 During the early days of the pandemic, the unions came together with, uh, the grocery store chains and came out with a couple of rules. Uh, people might've seen these in action. These include, uh, barriers between some tellers and people checking out the ability for people working in checkout to wipe down, uh, their, their, uh, point of service. Um, people are able to walk off the job if they feel that safety precautions are not being taken. If a customer is not wearing a mask, if they haven't been given time to sanitize their space. Speaker 1: 02:12 Okay. You know, I'm curious, uh, are the cases among grocery store and pharmacy workers higher in some places around San Diego versus others. Speaker 2: 02:21 So we have seen a different amount of COVID-19 positivity in different areas in the County, but the union says that they're getting these reports from everywhere in the County. And that's because people who live in different places in the County, obviously work elsewhere in the County. Um, so this is widespread. It's not just South Bay, South Bay, North County, everywhere in the County. Right now they're getting these reports. Speaker 1: 02:44 And you mentioned these essential workers are represented by a union. Tell me about the union and how they're advocating for these employees. Speaker 2: 02:51 So this is a United food and commercial workers local one 35. Um, they're the ones fielding reports from workers, uh, about things like unsafe conditions. So one thing that they, a union chief told me in an interview was that they were able to go to a supermarket where a counter, which was counting the people that entered the store had been disabled. They don't know how, but basically those counters are important because they want to fight back against density. In these grocery stores. Obviously we've become accustomed to the line that snake out of these grocery stores, some are larger and have more capacity, so they don't have a line. Uh, that's where these counters come really in handy because it lets them know, uh, if they've gone over capacity without them knowing, Speaker 1: 03:36 Did you get any sense of how optimistic they are about getting grocery and pharmacy workers bumped up on the vaccine priority list? Speaker 2: 03:46 So right now grocery workers are in group one C uh, in San Diego County, which is this huge group. Um, that includes, uh, to behind educators. It includes a lot of people involved in retail. I spoke with the union chief Todd Walters, uh, who's the president of UFC w local one 35. And he talked about the negotiations that are currently taking place. Speaker 3: 04:09 The problem with that is there's, there's about 10 million people that fall into that category. And so right now there's a big fight within the state. Um, everybody's trying to push their, their group to the top of list. Speaker 2: 04:20 So obviously as we're seeing the vaccines become expedited and more generally available, we're going to see some more clarification from the state about exactly who's going to get these vaccines. And when they're going to get it, obviously every different group wants their workers to be first. Um, but there's a pretty persuasive argument by grocery workers, especially because with outdoor dining closed, a lot of people are relying on grocery chains to stay in business. And not only that pharmacies to be the ones that distribute the vaccine. So one thing that the governor has been saying is we need to vaccinate the vaccinators. Well, if people working at CVS is going to be where you're going to get that vaccine, obviously the first people that need to be vaccinated would be those CVS workers. Speaker 1: 05:03 How much of a risk is it to the general public to have grocery workers who handle food and pharmacists to handle medicine, be infected at such a high rate? Speaker 2: 05:14 Well, I mean, the first problem is that it's a problem for the workers for people. We're not really sure. We don't quite have the data. Um, we know that spur the COVID 19 is very widespread right now. People should spend as little time as possible in grocery stores. They should take precautions. They should be masked when possible outdoors, even that's coming from the governor. Um, and, and the big problem is that it shouldn't be this high of a rate that we have now. Um, if you want to guarantee safety in all aspects of public life, that's why the stay at home order is in effect. So really it's, it's a risk of the general public to have as much widespread, um, infections as we have right now. And it's really tough to nail down and drill down into what is this safe and unsafe environment. Basically, what you can do is make sure that workers are working in the safest possible spaces. Um, and ultimately that leads to getting a vaccine. Speaker 4: 06:05 I've been speaking with KPBS reporter max Rivlin, Adler, max, thanks for joining us. Thank you.