There were eight new cases of COVID-19 across the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) nuclear weapons complex this week, as agency headquarters remobilized additional personnel sent home during the pandemic and the Pantex Plant in Texas prepared to do the same.
That makes for a total of 107 cases at the NNSA since January, when officials in Washington state reported the first confirmed U.S. case of the respiratory disease.
Nobody at NNSA had died from the disease at deadline Friday for Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor. The Department of Energy branch was tracking 34 active cases and 73 recoveries across the complex, a spokesperson wrote in an email.
Shortly after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic in mid-March, NNSA sites across the country moved to send all but essential workers home. Essential nuclear weapons missions continued, though not always at the pace that would be possible with the restrictions required to live and work safely with the omnipresent virus.
Some NNSA headquarters employees in the Washington, D.C.. region started to return to work this week, when DOE office buildings in downtown D.C. and nearby Maryland partially reopened. There are about 1,000 NNSA employees in the capital region, the “vast majority” of whom were still working remotely, the NNSA spokesperson said.
The spokesperson refused to say how many headquarters employees returned to work this week, but said those who did “are specifically focused on ensuring the continued performance of the Department’s mission priorities and/or implementing protocols to facilitate the NNSA re-entry process.”
Some NNSA senior managers continued to occasionally report to the Washington-area buildings for work after the region locked down in mid-March. In Phase 1 of the Energy Department remobilization, only essential employees are coming back. Any headquarters employees who assert that they are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19, or who are caring for someone who is, do not have to return in Phase 1. Phase 2 notionally begins the week of June 22. Phase 3 would mark the return of essentially pre-COVID-19 operations, with telework as necessary.
At the broader DOE in Washington, about 250 employees and support services contractors were to return to work this week. There are normally about 7,000 DOE employees and support contractors at the two main headquarters buildings. There have been at least 16 confirmed cases of COVID-19 at the headquarters buildings, including one death.
Meanwhile, the Pantex Plant in Amarillo on Friday announced it planned to begin returning to normal operations, although with telework for anyone able to telework, beginning Monday, June 15. That is according to notices posted to the plant’s website on Friday.
Pantex is surrounded by rural counties that experienced skyrocketing COVID-19 rates n May, when officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention arrived to administer tests for workers at local meat processing plants – operations that have been hubs for the spread of the disease. For that reason, Pantex decided to keep only essential workers on-site, even as other NNSA weapons sites began bringing increasing numbers of employees back.
At the Y-12 National Security Complex, for example, a spokesperson said“many” nuclear weapons workers and support contractors returned to the site after May 11 — again, with telework continuing for anyone able to do it.
The NNSA weapons production sites – Y-12, Pantex, and the Kansas City National Security Campus in Missouri – face extraordinary schedule pressure. They have generally continued manufacturing nuclear weapons parts — or servicing weapons, in Pantex’s case — throughout the pandemic.
At the NNSA national laboratoreis, it is a different story. All three labs still have most employees off-site, and none have announced plans to start bringing employees back inside the fences en masse.
A spokesperson said Friday the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California is keeping about two-thirds of its roughly 6,500 off-site. The lab reported one new confirmed case of COVID-19 this week, bringing the cumulative total since the outbreak started to seven: six lab employees and one subcontractor.
At the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico and California, more than half the roughly 12,500 employees were still off-site at deadline, a spokesperson said. There are 15 COVID-19 cases at Sandia: 11 in New Mexico and four in California. That was unchanged from last week.
A spokesperson for the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico said Monday the first nuclear weapons lab had 11 cases, unchanged from the week before. Fewer than 20% of the 8,762 people who work for lab contractor Triad National Security were on-site as of last week.
Los Alamos and Sandia both can test their own employees for COVID-19. Each lab has administered and processed about 1,000 tests, representatives said this week. At Los Alamos, anyone reporting to work on-site is subject to random, mandatory testing. Sandia says it doesn’t do mandatory random testing.
Livermore does not test its own employees.
COVID-19 Cases in NNSA Host Regions
Following is Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor’s weekly digest of confirmed COVID-19 cases, including fatal cases, in the host cities and counties of NNSA nuclear weapons sites.
The figures below are the cumulative cases recorded since the first confirmed U.S. instance of COVID-19 in January.
Data come from a tracker maintained by Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and from select states, counties, and cities, where noted. The Monitor tracks weekly changes, using the latest data available at deadline, which is sometimes current as of the Thursday before publication.
Testing figures report the number of aggregate tests, not the number of people tested.
Kansas City, Mo. – Kansas City National Security Campus
The city so far has a total of 1,654 total confirmed cases and 28 deaths, up from 1,437 confirmed cases and 27 deaths last week.
Statewide, the instances of new cases increased this week from the prior week, with Missouri registering more than 15,707 confirmed cases and 865 total deaths, up from 14,400 confirmed cases and 799 deaths a week ago. There were almost 100 fewer new cases reported this week than last week.
Two weeks ago, Missouri changed the way it reports COVID-19 tests performed in the state and now includes only tests that look for active cases. Previously, the state included in its totals tests that check to see whether a healthy person had previously had COVID-19, according to the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services.
About 218,600 tests had been performed statewide, at deadline Friday, from 170,000 a week ago. The week before that, when Missouri was still lumping both types of tests together, it reported nearly 173,000 tests.
Missouri was among the first states to reopen businesses that shuttered for months to slow the spread of COVID-19.
New Mexico – NNSA Albuquerque, Albuquerque; Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque; Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos
New Mexico had more than 9,367 confirmed total cases and 383 deaths at deadline, up sharply from 8,300 cases and 383 total deaths a week ago. The number of new cases reported this week was 67 higher than the number of new cases reported the week before.
Bernalillo County, near Albuquerque and Sandia, had about 1,652 confirmed positive cases and 77 deaths at deadline, up from about 1,500 cases and 73 deaths last week. More than 245,500 tests had been performed in New Mexico, rising from about 212,996 a week ago and 179,543 the week before that, according to the state and the Johns Hopkins tracker.
Los Alamos County held steady week over week at six total confirmed cases and no deaths, maintaining that level of confirmed infections for the eighth consecutive week.
Cases in some of the counties surrounding Los Alamos rose again this week, though not dramatically, and at a rate of increase about the same as last week’s. Sandoval County had 607 confirmed cases and 27 deaths at deadline, up from 578 confirmed cases a week ago, with no new deaths. Sandoval has a worse outbreak than any other county near Los Alamos, but the spread has slowed in past weeks.
Taos County had 31 confirmed cases and no deaths this week, no change from last week. Rio Arriba had 60 cases and one death, up from 52 cases and one death last week. Santa Fe, N.M., south of Los Alamos, had 161 confirmed total cases, up from 150 confirmed a week ago. Santa Fe’s fatal cases held steady at three for a third consecutive week.
Oak Ridge, Tenn., Anderson County – Y-12 National Security Complex
There were at deadline 55 confirmed cases and two deaths in Anderson County, Tenn., which includes the Y-12 National Security Complex. That is up from 42 confirmed cases a week ago, with no new deaths.
In May, COVID-19 infections in Tennessee rose by about 1,000 a week every week, then jumped even more sharply in the first week of June, when the state received reports of nearly 3,700 new confirmed cases. There were almost 1,200 more new cases confirmed this week than last week.
There were at deadline more than 28,300 confirmed total cases and 441 total deaths statewide, up from 25,200 cases and 401 deaths a week ago. There were 600 fewer new cases in Tennessee this week than there were last week. There had been about 535,300 tests performed in the state at deadline, up from 476,138 last week and 415,989 the week before, according to the state and the Johns Hopkins tracker.
Livermore, Calif., Alameda County – Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (including Sandia, Calif.)
In Alameda County, near the Livermore lab, there were as of this week more than 4,232 confirmed cases and 109 total deaths at deadline, up from 3,600 confirmed cases and 97 deaths a week ago. The number of new cases this week was around 130 higher than the number of new cases last week.
For more than a month, the county has had more confirmed cases and deaths than nearby San Francisco, which had nearly 2,840 confirmed cases and 44 total deaths, up from 2,650 confirmed cases and 43 deaths a week ago.
California, the largest and most populous state in the union, had around 143,500 confirmed cases and 4,934 total deaths at deadline, compared with about 123,000 confirmed cases and 4,454 total deaths a week ago. There were about 500 more new confirmed cases in California this week than there were last week. There have been more than 2.6 million total tests performed in California, up from about 2.1 million last week and 1.8 million the week before that.
Aiken, S.C., Aiken County – Savannah River Site
Aiken had about 222 confirmed cases at deadline Friday, with eight deaths. That’s up from about 208 cases and seven deaths a week ago.
The Savannah River Site itself had confirmed 32 total cases of COVID-19 at deadline Friday, up from 23 a week ago. At deadline Friday, however, 23 site personnel who previously tested positive had recovered.
Statewide, South Carolina had 16,441 confirmed cases and 588 total confirmed deaths this week, up from about 13,855 confirmed cases and 470 deaths last week. There were 263 more confirmed new cases reported this week than last week. There had been about 230,057 tests performed in South Carolina as of deadline, up from about 230,851 a week ago and 182,200 tests the week before that.
Amarillo, Texas, including Potter and Randall counties – Pantex Plant
The two host counties of Pantex still have more cumulative cases and more new cases week-to-week than the host region of any other NNSA production site. There is a cluster of essential industries besides nuclear weapons production in and around the two counties, including meat processing facilities.
The two Amarillo-area counties had a combined total of 3,531 cases and 43 deaths at deadline: 2,783 cases and 36 deaths in Potter; 748 cases and seven deaths in Randall, according to the Amarillo Public Health Department.
That at least marked a slowdown in the number of new confirmed infections reported from week to week. The two counties this week posted 51 confirmed new cases, even as health facilities there processed more new tests than in past weeks.
Last week at this time, the counties had a combined 3,228 cases and 38 deaths: 2,504 cases and 32 deaths for Potter, and 724 cases and six deaths in Randall.
In the two counties, there have been a combined 19,621 tests performed, rising from 15,203 last week and from 13,239 the week before that, according to the Amarillo health department.
In total, the Lone Star State had more than 82,658 total confirmed cases and 1,930 total deaths, up from 70,700 cases and 1,783 total deaths last week. The number of new cases confirmed this week was more than 1,500 higher than the number of new cases confirmed last week. There had been more than 1.1 million tests done in Texas as of Friday, up from 1 million last week, and 873,000 the week before that, according to the state and the Hopkins tracker.
Nevada – Nevada National Security Site
There were 72 confirmed cases in Nye County, Nev., near the northwestern perimeter of the former Nevada Test Site, up two from 64 a week ago. Nye County has had two fatal cases of COVID-19 at deadline, level with a week ago.
In Las Vegas and surrounding Clark County, which have most of the state’s cases and deaths, there were more than 8,314 cases and 377 deaths, up from around 7,900 cases and 370 total deaths last week.
Statewide, Nevada had nearly 10,700 cases and 462 deaths, up from 9,460 cases and 452 total deaths a week ago. The number of new cases recorded this week was higher by almost 350 than the number of new cases recorded the week before. There had been more than 193,254 tests performed in Nevada, as of deadline, up from about 161,423 a week ago and 130,000 tests a week before that, according to the state and the Johns Hopkins tracker.
Nationwide
There were at deadline 113,899 confirmed fatal cases of COVID-19 domestically, up more than 5,500 from some 108,278 confirmed deaths last week, according to the Hopkins tracker.
The increase in fatal cases this week was a little lower than last week, when the Hopkins tracker showed around 6,000 new virus fatalities. However, COVID-19 deaths are down thousands, compared with the 10,000 new fatalities recorded three weeks ago.
The U.S. has long been, and remains, the most infected nation on Earth, with more than 2 million confirmed cases, which is around 200,000 more than a week ago.
Since confirmation that the outbreak had hit the U.S., nearly 540,292 people domestically had recovered from their bouts with COVID-19, making for about 55,000 recoveries week-to-week, at deadline. There had been nearly 22 million tests performed in the U.S., up from 18 million a week ago, and up from 15.5 million the week before that.
