Ten people associated with Cabot Creamery have tested positive for Covid-19 in what the state is now calling an “outbreak investigation.”
Dozens of workers at the plant were sent home over the last week after three people tested positive, as VTDigger reported earlier this week. Department of Health spokesperson Ben Truman said the state had learned of eight confirmed cases as of Tuesday night, and a company spokesperson said there had been two additional cases.
At least 60 workers were quarantined at one point, said the spokesperson, Amber Sheridan of Cabot Creamery’s parent cooperative, Agri-Mark.
Jenn Miner, emergency management director for the Cabot town government, said she was first contacted about the situation last Wednesday.
Miner said the Cabot Creamery facility has had two previous Covid scares. Last June, an employee tested positive after traveling out of state, she said, but no community spread was traced to the case. And last November, two other employees tested positive, causing about 15 workers to quarantine. But no other employees contracted the virus, she said.
On both occasions, she said she reached out to Cabot to offer help if needed. But she “didn’t really get a lot of cooperation from the creamery.”
“They were very frustrated that I even knew anything about the situation,” she said, adding that she could better answer questions in her role if people were cooperative and transparent.
Sheridan, the Agri-Mark spokesperson, said management had been keeping employees aware of what was happening with memos posted throughout its facility. She said supervisors had also been sharing the details of those memos with their teams.
“When it pertains to our contact tracing process, in order to maintain HIPAA compliance, we only discuss relevant information with those employees that may be directly impacted,” Sheridan said, referring to patient privacy laws. “We encourage any employee to ask questions if they have concerns but cannot disclose information that may not be directly relevant to them.”
Sheridan added that employees were free to discuss anything they wanted to on their own time.
“We ask that team members refrain from engaging in distractive dialogue during work hours as that hinders others from completing their work,” she said.
