As vaccine rollouts continue, confirmed, active cases of COVID-19 across the National Nuclear Security Administration complex dropped to their lowest reported level since mid-October.
In December, The semi-autonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapons agency was reporting around 1,000 active cases a week.
As of Friday, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) had 56 new confirmed COVID-19 cases for the week and nearly 10 times as many recoveries at 533, a spokesperson at agency headquarters in Washington wrote in an email Friday.
NNSA headquarters has not reported more than 100 new COVID-19 cases across its network of labs, plants and sites since the week ended Feb. 12. In the six weeks since, new confirmed cases have averaged around 55 a week — as high as 64, as low as 28.
The NNSA has reported a confirmed total of 5,250 cases of COVID-19 since the viral disease, caused by the novel coronavirus that broke out in Wuhan, China in 2019, was confirmed to have reached U.S. shores in January 2020. The count includes civil servants and contractors.
Meanwhile, the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge Tennessee has at last gotten the green light to administer vaccines on site, a spokesperson for site prime Consolidated Nuclear Security wrote in an email Thursday. The company also runs the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas.
As of Friday, more than 4,000 personnel at Pantex and Y-12 — including DOE federal employees — had received one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. That’s about 1,400 more than a week ago, the Consolidated Nuclear Security spokesperson wrote.
About 2,000 employees across the two sites had received a second dose at deadline, said the spokesperson, up about 400, compared with last week. Two of the three vaccines available in the U.S. require two doses.
Of those total doses, about 1,600 were administered at Pantex, flat compared with last week.
At Y-12, about 2,400 employees had received at least a dose at deadline, up some 1,400 from a week ago. Y-12 started administering vaccines on-site Wednesday, the spokesperson said. The Y-12 figures account for vaccinations administered off-site before the complex was cleared to give out doses inside the fence.
Meanwhile, at the Nevada National Security Site, about 1,800 people had gotten at least one dose while 1,500 had received a second dose, a spokesperson said Thursday in an email. About half the people at the site were still teleworking.
National Laboratories Cases
Following are the reported numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases at NNSA nuclear weapons laboratories, along with increases relative to the prior week and the number of people vaccinated, as provided Friday by the labs.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory:
Cases: 317 (+5)
At deadline Friday, Livermore was still vaccinating its personnel from a stockpile of about 2,000 doses that the lab, a designated point of distribution, received from DOE and NNSA in collaboration with the Pentagon, a Livermore spokesperson said.
A week ago, the spokesperson said that the doses will cover “about one quarter of our population” and take about two weeks to administer.
The Livermore spokesperson declined to say whether the vaccine Livermore received requires two doses or one to reach its maximum effectiveness.
Los Alamos National Laboratory:
Cases: 802 (+3. 756 people who got sick had recovered, as of deadline, while four had died). Los Alamos has started vaccinations, but a spokesperson declined to say how many personnel there had received doses. A source said this week that some 2,000 lab personnel have received two vaccine doses, and about twice as many have gotten at least one dose.
Internal tests: 17,882 (+160. A lab spokesperson said Friday these on-site tests have resulted in 254 positive results: which was flat, compared with last week).
Teleworking: Roughly 65% of all employees, flat compared with last week.
Sandia National Laboratories:
In March, Sandia National Laboratories instituted a one-week lag time reporting COVID data to the public because of “a shift in when our numbers are being updated internally,” a spokesperson said.
Here are the most recent numbers available for Sandia at deadline, which were current as of March 19.
Cases: 784 (+18).
Internal tests: 10,587 (+251).
Sandia started vaccinations the week of Jan. 11, the labs network has since given 1,430 people both doses of a two-dose COVID-19 vaccine, the labs spokesperson said. That’s up more than 800, compared with the prior week, according to the spokesperson. “[A] number of other employees have received vaccines offsite,” the spokesperson said.
Teleworking: Roughly 65% of all employees, flat compared with the prior week.
