(CNN) — Germany is racing to stop a new coronavirus outbreak after 650 workers at a slaughterhouse in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia tested positive for Covid-19.
Toennies, the company that owns the meat processing facility in Guetersloh, halfway between Dortmund and Hanover, temporarily shut the plant down on Wednesday afternoon.
Gereon Schulze Althoff, the director of quality management and veterinary services at the company, said the plant had a number of foreign workers who have traveled in recent weeks and might have been carrying the virus with them. He said the workers and their welfare are the priority for the company.
However, he admitted that maintaining social distancing was not easy at the facility. “Our plants have not been built for a pandemic,” Schulze Althoff said at a news conference on Wednesday.
The local government in Guetersloh closed all daycare centers and schools starting Thursday, but did not impose a general lockdown. “The district of Guetersloh clearly exceeded the critical mark of 50 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants in seven days,” the city’s crisis team said in a statement.
A federal agreement between the German states says that if the rate of new infections surpasses 50 per 100,000 people in seven days, authorities should consider imposing measures to contain the outbreak.
German chancellor Angela Merkel announced Wednesday that a ban on large events in the country will be extended until at least the end of October.
Speaking after a meeting in Berlin with the premiers of Germany’s 16 states, Merkel urged caution as the country moved towards further easing of coronavirus restrictions. Merkel said that physical distancing rules will remain in place across Germany.
Germany has been relatively successful in fighting coronavirus, at least compared to other European states. The country of 83 million people reported 188,604 cases and 8,868 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University (JHU) on Thursday. Neighboring France, which reported 194,805 cases, has recorded 29,578 deaths on the JHU tally.
Germany was praised for widespread Covid-19 testing and its well-resourced health system even allowed its hospitals to accept patients from other European countries.
But the outbreak in the meat plant raises worries that the situation could worsen. The country has recently lifted some of the harshest restrictions and reopened its borders.
The latest episode from Germany echoes this week’s experiences in Beijing and New Zealand, where authorities appeared to have the epidemic under control but infections have since flared again.
New Zealand declared itself Covid-19-free last week after it had passed 40 days since the last case of community transmission. But earlier this week, two women who arrived from the UK tested positive for the virus. Another person has since tested positive in New Zealand.
Similarly, the Chinese capital of Beijing has now reported a new cluster of infections linked to the city’s largest wholesale food market after 56 days without any locally transmitted cases.
This story was first published on CNN.com, “Germany reports 650 new coronavirus cases in a meat processing plant”
