The Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state has confirmed another case of COVID-19 among its workforce, which would be its 14th and the first reported since Friday.
In addition, DOE’s Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina has confirmed its 36th case. Twenty-three of those workers have recovered and returned to work.
The notices from Savannah River and Hanford were posted within the past 24 hours on the websites for the respective DOE complexes.
The Hanford employee has not been on-site since June 5 and the office building where the person worked has been disinfected, according to the update. Savannah River officials did not release any similar information on the latest person to test positive there.
Both Hanford, a former plutonium production complex, and SRS, which has operations for both DOE’s Office of Environmental Management and semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), employ about 11,000 people. Most personnel at the two locations either worked remotely or collected paid leave from late March until late May, as DOE sought to decrease the spread of COVID-19.
Both sites are in Phase 1 of DOE remobilization, which focuses on bringing back the first groups of employees for high-priority or low-risk work. There are a total of four phases, with Phase 3 involving a return to near-normal staffing levels on-site.
