The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., had 14 more employees test positive for COVID-19 between Jan. 13 and Jan. 19, the prime contractor said in a Saturday Twitter post, while a half-dozen more cases were confirmed Sunday at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
Eleven of the 14 at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) work directly for prime contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership, while the other three work for subcontractors, according to the social media notice
To date, WIPP management has learned of 237 positive confirmed cases since the coronavirus took hold in the United States in early 2020, according to the prime. Of this total, 209 have recovered in accordance with protocols issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to the post.
The six latest positive confirmed cases at Hanford bring the total there to roughly 625 cases, based on public statements by DOE’s site manager Brian Vance and updates to a DOE operations website for the former plutonium production facility.
Last week there were 423 active cases at nuclear cleanup operations overseen by the DOE Office of Environmental Management, according to a spokesperson for the office. That is down from 473 the week before.
The coronavirus pandemic has taken its toll nationally and across the globe. As of this morning there were more than 25.1 million total cases of COVID-19 in the United States and 419,000 deaths as a result since the pandemic began, according to an online tracker run by Johns Hopkins University.
