Berkeley Bowl employees test positive for virus
Multiple employees at both locations of Berkeley Bowl grocery stores tested positive for the coronavirus, General Manager Steve Tsujimoto said Friday.
Tsujimoto said that he could not confirm a specific number at this time to protect the privacy of employees, saying only that it was a “small number.”
Both stores remain open with normal hours. Berkeley Bowl Marketplace and Berkeley Bowl West posted alerts at their entrances on June 29 and July 1, respectively, according to Berkeleyside, a local news site. Both stores were sanitized and disinfected by a firm the chain hired, Tsujimoto said.
The grocer is the latest in the Bay Area to report a coronavirus outbreak among its employees. Workers have been infected with the
virus at Trader Joe’s locations in San Francisco, Whole Foods in Marin County, Cardenas Market in Oakland and a Safeway distribution center in Tracy.
Rainbow Grocery in San Francisco said that while some employees have independently been tested, there have been no known positive cases among its workforce so far.
Grocery stores, deemed essential businesses, have remained open during the pandemic, and workers face a constant risk of exposure despite measures stores take to protect employees and customers.
According to a June 25 report from the United Food and Commercial Workers, 82 grocery workers died across the country during the first 100 days of the pandemic and more than 11,500 became infected with or were exposed to the virus.
Tsujimoto said the affected employees at Berkeley Bowl are in isolation while they are sick, and must test negative before returning to work. The company used contact tracing to find other potentially exposed employees, who are now in quarantine awaiting test results. He said the company has communicated this information to all employees.
An employee who wished to remain anonymous due to fear of retaliation from the company said that many employees only found out about the incidents of infection through news outlets and word of mouth between employees. They said that store management only told people who worked in the same departments as the affected employees about the positive tests.
“There is no communication,” said the person, who was granted anonymity in accordance with The Chronicle’s policy on anonymous sources.
Tsujimoto disputed this characterization, saying that management only had oneonone conversations with employees who could have been exposed, but that signs were posted in the break room next to the time clocks where employees punch in every day. He said that management did not want to tell all employees who among them had tested positive in order to protect the individuals’ privacy.
He added that anyone who wasn’t told directly by management wasn’t at any risk, and that department heads should have shared the information with their departments.
“We did take all the proper steps,” Tsujimoto said. “We have to go by as best we can with the guidelines from the health department, the CDC, and then we try on top of that to do extra things.”
The grocery store also worked with the city of Berkeley to provide free testing to employees and is working on doing a second round of tests, he added.
Berkeley Bowl stores have been disinfecting shopping carts and using Plexiglas barriers at checkout, as well as carefully controlling lines, Tsujimoto said.
To keep shoppers and employees safe, Bay Area grocery stores and national chains have rolled out various health and sanitation measures such as installing 6foot markers to help customers observe distance guidelines, conducting daily wellness checks including temperature screenings, providing hand sanitizer and increasing the frequency of cleanings. Most stores are also restricting the number of people coming in and requiring masks to be worn before entering, with security guards or other workers enforcing the rules.
“The situation we’ve been up against is new for everybody,” Tsujimoto said. “We are doing everything potentially possible just to keep everybody safe.”