There were 177 active, confirmed COVID-19 cases across the National Nuclear Security Administration’s civilian and contractor workforce in the first week of May, the agency reported Friday, keeping current infections around the plateau they fell to in April.
Week-to-week, active cases among National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) civil servants and contractors was down by 55, but still close to the average of 180 active cases a week posted over April. Confirmed active cases at the NNSA and its sites dipped below 200 a week during the first week of April and haven’t reached that level since.
Most major NNSA sites now offer employees free COVID-19 vaccinations on premises, and vaccination rates at production sites and labs have soared since January, when on-site inoculation began en masse. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory was the last of the three nuclear weapons labs to get a shipment of vaccines, but the California-based design lab has since given out thousands of shots.
In May, the NNSA ceased reporting the number of cumulative COVID-19 cases logged at the agency since the pandemic reached the U.S. in early 2020. NNSA had counted more than 5,300 cases as of April 16, by which time new confirmed cases had slowed to a relative trickle of about 45 a week, on average, over the final month of reporting. That was down from a peak of more than 1,000 new cases a week, on average, over December and early January.
