Central Minnesota Political

On Thursday, May 28th, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported the beef packer Long Prairie Packing, a division of American Foods Group, had 227 employees that had tested positive for COVID 19. The newspaper attributed the numbers to the Minnesota Department of Health. The company had begun conducting tests a week earlier under the auspices of Lakewood Health System of Staples, according to Todd County Public Health. According to a Public Health press release, dated Thursday, May 22nd, testing had begun on May 21st and all Long Prairie Packing employees who tested positive would be asked to isolate themselves. People with symptoms who tested positive as well as people without symptoms who tested positive would be asked to Isolate themselves, the press release said. As of Saturday May 30th Todd County had 313 confirmed positive Covid 19 tests. That makes Todd County the 14th highest Covid County in the state. Most of the other counties are counties with huge populations such

JBS USA, a subsidiary of the Brazilian meat and poultry processing behemoth with two plants in Minnesota, is killing its workers.  JBS “ignored federal guidance and put plant workers in the cross hairs of a global pandemic,” a lawsuit filed in Philadelphia earlier this month, alleges. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Enock Benjamin by a Philadelphia law firm, according to a May 7th report in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Mr. Benjamin was a seventy year old union steward, in good health, who worked at the 1,400 employee JBS beef processing plant in Souderton, Pennsylvania, according to the newspaper. He  died on Friday, April 3rd from respiratory failure brought on by the pandemic virus, according to the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office. Knock Benjamin - Thanks WHYY radio According to the newspaper, the suit, filed in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court, says that JBS failed to protect workers with masks and other safety measures at the meat-processing complex, and i

For the seven days between April 30th and May 6th confirmed COVID 19 cases in Minnesota rose by 128%. That’s by far the steepest increase of any state, except Puerto Rico, according to a reports in the Guardian on May 6th and Axios on May 5th. The increase is due, in part, to the State conducting an increasing number of tests. The Minnesota Department of Health has always said that most cases go undetected. However by May 7th, due to increased testing and the continued spread of the virus, 1177 people, or nearly 4% of the population, in Nobles County in Southwestern Minnesota had tested positive for the virus. On May 8th, Stearns County, with a population of 150,000 people had gone from 55 confirmed a week earlier to 1,274 cases. To the south of Stearns, Kandiyohi County had 261. Although Todd County’s numbers remain small but they grew from seven on April  30th to twenty-nine on May 8th. That’s a 300% increase and more than matches the States unprecedented increase. T