Joe McLaughlin Archives - Saving Seafood

COVID-19 outbreaks force seafood processing shutdowns in Alaska, Chile

January 28, 2021 — COVID-19 outbreaks in seafood processing plants in Alaska and Chile have highlighted how the virus is still wreaking havoc on the global seafood industry, more than a year after the first cases were reported outside of China.

Despite hopes that the start of vaccination efforts in the U.S. and elsewhere might eventually bring an end to the problems the virus has caused, the seafood industry is still treading carefully, trying to thread the needle between worker safety and maintaining profitability – or at least solvency.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

COVID-19 Outbreak At Aleutian Processing Plant Grows To 135

January 28, 2021 — A COVID-19 outbreak at one of Alaska’s largest fish processing plants has infected nearly 20 percent of workers, with testing only partially finished, officials said Tuesday.

At Trident Seafoods’ huge plant on the remote Aleutian island of Akutan, 135 of 700 workers have tested positive for the virus, state officials reported Tuesday.

The company has only tested about half of its workforce, and Dr. Joe McLaughlin, the state epidemiologist, said at a news conference that the outbreak is still on an “upward trajectory.”

“I don’t think this outbreak is going to end in the next several days,” McLaughlin said. “I think it’s going to go on for a while.”

Trident officials announced a three-week closure last week after a handful of workers tested positive for COVID-19, just as the billion-dollar pollock fishing season kicked off.

Read the full story at KUCB

Outsiders in Alaska sparked COVID-19 fears and drove up case counts. Now they’re barely a blip.

September 28, 2020 — Alaskans eyed the coming of summer’s fishing, resource and tourist seasons warily.

The influx of outsiders brought new risks of the spread of COVID-19 to a state that had so far escaped the deadly surges overfilling emergency rooms in other places.

Daily coronavirus case counts for people from out of state, dubbed “nonresidents” in state data, rose quickly by July. On some days, they accounted for a quarter or a third of all the new reported infections.

Now the number of out-of-state workers and visitors with confirmed COVID-19 cases has dropped to zero some days, single digits most others.

The reason is pretty simple.

By early September, the tourists and thousands of fishing industry workers who made up the bulk of Alaska’s nonresident population all but disappeared.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

A shift in who’s involved in Alaska seafood industry outbreaks means virus may be harder to contain

July 24, 2020 — Alaska’s three largest coronavirus outbreaks involve workers in the seafood industry, a sector that prompted concern as the the summer’s fishing seasons started in June but for months seemed to be under control.

Now the outbreaks have changed.

The new outbreaks come with “high attack rates” and a harder-to-contain demographic: a mix of out-of-state workers and residents who go from working close together in processing plants to friends and family at home and the community at large, state epidemiologist Dr. Joe McLaughlin said Thursday.

As the season started, thousands of seafood workers flowed into the state. Seafood companies filed plans promising to test workers multiple times and quarantine them, given the potential that outbreaks on vessels and in processing plants could overwhelm fragile state and local health care systems.

Early on, halting transmission from infected seafood workers was “pretty easy,” McLaughlin said at a media briefing. Some workers were halted by positive COVID-19 tests before they even arrived. Others entered an immediate 14-day quarantine when they arrived in Alaska.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News