‘HSE dithered on virus advice to meat plants’
Oireachtas will be told of delays
‘Designated as an essential service’ ‘Particular physical challenges’
HSE experts didn’t act fast enough in offering coronavirus guidelines to meat plants, an Oireachtas committee will hear today.
Meat Industry Ireland will say it took until two months after it released its own rules before the HSE offered guidance on preventing the spread of Covid19 in plants, which have been a hotspot for the virus.
The lobby group will tell the committee that the HSE didn’t issue its guidelines until mid-May, by which time meat plants were already suffering large-scale outbreaks of the virus among staff.
The coronavirus outbreak in meat plants became the worst in any section of the economy, excluding nursing homes.
An MII representative will tell the committee that ‘it was not until May 15, 2020, that the HSE published its “Interim Guidance on Covid-19” specifically for the meat sector, some two months after MII members first implemented measures across all meat establishments’.
It also notes that the first Irish coronavirus case was reported on February 29 and the first restrictions were announced by the Government on March 12. ‘By then, and weeks before we entered full lockdown, MII members had already introduced a series of mitigation measures which have since been updated to reflect evolving best practice,’ the MII will say.
The submission suggests that the industry moved far faster than the HSE to combat the virus.
It will say that the nature of the business was one of the difficulties in containing the coronavirus. ‘Meat processing is a labourintensive business, with limited automation available... The sector, designated as an essential service, is one of the few sectors that remained open for business throughout the lockdown,’ the submission reads.
‘Where early cases of Covid-19 were detected, businesses quickly responded by following the appropriate self-isolation advice for all employees who showed virus symptoms or who tested positive. MII members also traced close contacts who were also asked to self-isolate,’ it will state.
It does note that, however late the HSE response, health officials did offer advice on a local level.
‘The first Covid-19 case was reported in a meat processing plant on March 17. Further cases followed and as clusters began to form in certain sites, the HSE provided collaborative oversight and assistance at local level,’ it states.
The MII submission also notes many cases appeared to spread from people who showed no symptoms but stayed working. ‘Many of these asymptomatic cases were detected as part of wider screening tests conducted at sites under the direction of the HSE,’ it says.
The meat industry submission also concedes that social distancing was difficult in many cases.
‘Maintaining a two-metre gap between people posed particular physical challenges for parts of the meat-processing production chain, specifically in deboning of meat which is a labour-intensive activity. To address this, Perspex dividers to separate side-by-side contact between employees were introduced and visors were used for employees facing each other on the production line as recommended by current HSE policy guidance,’ it states.
A report earlier this month by the European Centre for Disease Control found that while Ireland has a lower rate than other Western
European countries, it has had a number of significant outbreaks in meat plants, as has Germany and the Netherlands.
Fresh concerns of a second wave of the virus have been expressed by the union Siptu after the reproduction number (R rate) of cases in Germany rose sharply last month following outbreaks at meat plants. ‘I’m seriously concerned about the potential for an increase in the R rate, particularly in the meat industry,’ Siptu divisional organiser Greg Ennis told the Irish Daily Mail last month. ‘We saw 1,060 cases of Covid-19 out of 15,000 employees in meat factories throughout Ireland.’