The Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico has started mandatory, random COVID-19 tests for employees, as the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) tracked three new cases across its network of weapon facilities this week.
At deadline, that brought the total number of active cases across the eight primary NNSA-owned sites, including headquarters, to 23, flat from the previous week. There have been a total of 83 confirmed infections among NNSA employees since the pandemic hit the U.S., none of them fatal, an agency spokesperson in Washington said.
As of Friday, 60 people across the NNSA enterprise had recovered from their bouts with the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus that broke out in Wuhan, China, last year: three more than the week before.
The Los Alamos National Laboratory is the only NNSA site to acknowledge that it has established a mandatory testing program — and that participating in it is a condition of employment, including for subcontractors.
Los Alamos does not test every employee who reports to work on-site each day. Instead, managers randomly select personnel for tests, focusing specifically on people who are most vulnerable to the disease and those working on the lab’s most important national security programs. The lab tries to provide a few days’ notice of those selected for testing, which is conducted on-site via a drive-through process.
Around 12,500 people, including subcontractors and construction workers, work at Los Alamos, although the vast majority of those remain off-site because of COVID-19. During May, the lab wanted to perform and process about 400 COVID-19 tests per week, according an employee communique that month. A lab spokesperson acknowledged the testing program this week, but would not say how many people had been tested.
In late March, Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette determined that DOE prime contractors could receive indemnity for certain actions taken to respond to the disease, including administering tests and providing personal protection equipment. On April 2, the NNSA moved to indemnify Los Alamos prime contractor Triad National Security from any harm resulting from the lab-administered COVID-19 tests.
Of the three NNSA labs, only the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California cannot test its own employees for COVID-19. A spokesperson on Friday said the facility was “not providing any testing of our employees.”
A spokesperson said the Albuquerue, N.M.-based Sandia National Laboratories, which also has a presence at the Livermore campus, was not performing mandatory, random tests, as of Friday.
As of Friday, Livermore had logged a cumulative six confirmed positive cases of COVID-19 among its workforce of roughly 6,300, up only one from last week’s total. Sandia, meanwhile, had confirmed a total of 15 positive cases among its workforce as of Friday: 11 in Albuquerque and four in Livermore. That’s only one new case, compared with last week, when there were 10 cases in Albuquerque. Sandia has between 13,000 and 14,000 employees. The number normally includes about 1,000 students.
Most personnel at the three NNSA labs were still working off-site, as of Friday, said spokespersons. Sites create their own reopening plans, which NNSA headquarters must approve. Each site reached this week for comment declined to share the details of their reopening plans. Agency headquarters is essentially following the reopening plan for DOE headquarters, published last week.
Meanwhile, two of the three main NNSA weapons production sites, the Kansas City National Security Campus in Missouri and the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, were still admitting only personnel needed for mission-critical work. The Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., had resumed more or less normal operations as of Friday, except that most people who could telework were still doing so.
Production Sites
None of the NNSA production sites require COVID-19 tests for employees, though all continue to require workers to quarantine at home for two weeks if they feel sick, and to report positive COVID-19 tests to site management. All the sites also administer remote temperature checks to workers, and attempt social distancing. Where distancing isn’t practical, workers sometimes get personal protection equipment, including wearable items, or plastic screens to wall them off from colleagues.
Pantex, the weapon-assembly and maintenance facility crucial to routine maintenance and major weapon refurbishments, has been stuck in a holding pattern for two weeks. The plant had planned to start bringing more people back on-site this week, but instead chose to keep only mission-critical workers as cases in the surrounding counties skyrocketed in May.
The Kansas City campus, which makes the non-nuclear components of nuclear weapons, is the only production site near a major metropolitan area. In May, the city recorded between 100 and 150 new cases each week. Since the pandemic hit the U.S., the city had recorded a cumulative total of more than 1,000 cases, at deadline. Amid those conditions, the production site there has mostly kept support staff and nonessential workers away, despite running all three of its usual shifts throughout the pandemic, like all the production sites.
The areas near the Y-12 National Security Complex have had fewer confirmed cases than the host regions of the other two big production sites, leaving the NNSA uranium hub comfortable enough to continue construction of its Uranium Processing Facility during the pandemic response. The site started to let support personnel and nonessential people return earlier this month, and by May 11 “many employees were back at work,” a spokesperson for Y-12 management and operations contractor Consolidated Nuclear Security wrote in a Friday email.
The Savannah River Site, where the NNSA extracts tritium and fills up new tritium reservoirs for insertion into active weapons at Pantex, started bringing workers back on site this week. The NNSA’s tritium workforce never left, nor did workers clearing out space in the site’s K-Area for the agency’s planned Surplus Plutonium Disposition Project: Savannah River’s contribution to the NNSA’s effort to permanently dispose of 34 metric tons of weapon-usuable plutonium.
The Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management owns the Savannah River Site, where most of the budget is for now dedicated to cleanup of Cold War plutonium production. The NNSA passes funding for its national security work at the site through the Fluor-led Savannah River Nuclear Solutions management prime.
Nevada National Security Site
The former Nevada Test Site got more than its usual share of attention this week for reasons unrelated to COVID-19, following reports that Trump administration officials have discussed conducting a new nuclear explosive test there. The site paused most nuclear operations for all of April and some of May, but started letting personnel back on-site last week, a spokesperson said Friday.
Like the production sites, Nevada does not require COVID-19 testing for on-site employees, relying instead on self-reporting of symptoms, self-quarantining, and reporting positive test results to the occupational medical director, the spokesperson for site prime Mission Support and Test Services said Friday.
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. Nuclear Security & Deterrence 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 962 total confirmed cases and 22 deaths, up from 843 confirmed cases and 18 deaths last week.
Statewide, the instances of new cases increased this week from the prior week, with Missouri registering more than 13,000 confirmed cases and 595 total deaths, up from 12,200 confirmed cases and 595 deaths a week ago.
Missouri last week 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 state Department of Health and Senior Services.
About 170,000 tests had been performed statewide, at deadline Friday. Last week, 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. The state now allows all businesses to serve customers, provided employees and patrons continue to practice social distancing with the federally recommended 6 feet between people.
New Mexico – NNSA Albuquerque, Albuquerque; Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque; Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos
New Mexico had more than 7,300 confirmed total cases and 335 deaths at deadline, up sharply from 6,500 cases and 294 total deaths a week ago.
Bernalillo County, near Albuquerque and Sandia, had about 1,434 confirmed positive cases and 63 deaths at deadline, up from about 1,300 cases and 63 deaths last week. More than 179,543 tests had been performed in New Mexico, rising from about 147,000 a week ago and 115,011 the week before that, according to the state and the 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 sixth consecutive week.
Cases in the counties surrounding Los Alamos rose again this week, with a rate of increase a little lower than the one recorded last week. Sandoval County had 556 confirmed cases and 24 deaths at deadline, up from 528 confirmed cases and 24 deaths a week ago. Sandoval has a worse outbreak than any other county near Los Alamos.
Taos County had 24 confirmed cases and no deaths this week, up from 22 cases and no deaths last week. Rio Arriba had 41 cases and one death, up from 36 cases and no deaths last week. Santa Fe, N.M., south of Los Alamos, had 138 confirmed total cases, up from 127 confirmed a week ago. Santa Fe’s fatal cases held steady at three this week. The county recorded its first COVID-19 fatalities in May.
Oak Ridge, Tenn., Anderson County – Y-12 National Security Complex
There were at deadline 39 confirmed cases and one death in Anderson County, Tenn., which includes the Y-12 National Security Complex. That is up from 35 confirmed cases a week ago, with no new deaths.
COVID-19 infections in Tennessee rose by about 1,000 for a fourth week in a row. There were at deadline more than 21,500 confirmed total cases and 356 total deaths statewide, up from 19,000 cases and 313 deaths a week ago. There had been about 415,989 tests performed in Tennessee at deadline, up from 360,500 last week and 302,000 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 nearly 3,100 confirmed cases and 94 total deaths at deadline, up from 2,600 confirmed cases and 90 deaths a week ago.
For the third straight week, the county has more confirmed cases and deaths than nearby San Francisco, which had more than 2,400 confirmed cases and 37 total deaths, up from 2,200 confirmed cases and 37 deaths a week ago.
The death toll in Santa Clara, Calif., some 30 miles south by road from Livermore, was 140 as of Friday, up from 138 deaths a week ago. Santa Clara had a rash of deaths early in the pandemic, but fatal cases are drying up there, lately. Until last month, the city had more fatalities than any other part of California. Since then, Los Angeles has far outpaced Santa Clara, with more than 2,200 COVID-19 deaths at deadline, up from about 2,000 last week.
California, the largest and most populous state in the union, had more than 103,000 confirmed cases and nearly 4,000 total deaths at deadline, compared with 88,500 confirmed cases and 3,604 total deaths a week ago. There had been nearly 1.8 million total tests performed in California, at deadline, up from about 1.4 million last week and 1.1 million the week before that.
Aiken, S.C., Aiken County – Savannah River Site
Aiken had about 189 confirmed cases at deadline Friday, with seven deaths. That’s up from about 161 cases a week ago. There were no new fatal cases in Aiken this week.
The Savannah River Site itself had confirmed 22 total cases of COVID-19 at deadline Friday, up from 15 a week ago. At the site, 13 people who previously tested positive have recovered.
South Carolina overall had nearly 10,800 confirmed cases and 470 total confirmed deaths this week, up from about 9,300 confirmed cases and 416 deaths last week. There had been about 182,200 tests performed in South Carolina as of deadline, up from about 138,000 a week ago and 102,000 tests the week before that.
Amarillo, Texas, including Potter and Randall counties – Pantex Plant
After a surge in testing at the beginning of the month, Potter and Randall counties near Amarillo have by far the highest case rate of any NNSA production site. Potter, host of one essential meat processing plant and neighbor to another, has by far the worse outbreak.
Potter County had more than 100 new cases this week. That’s as high as many larger counties and cities, but still represents a major reduction from the surge in new cases over the previous two weeks. Last week, for example, new cases in Potter County rose by 892, week over week, according to the Amarillo Public Health Department.
The two Amarillo-area counties had a combined total of 2,934 cases and 34 deaths at deadline: 2,276 cases and 28 deaths in Potter; 658 cases and six deaths in Randall, according to the Amarillo Public Health Department.
Last week at this time, the counties had a combined 2,831 cases and 31 deaths: 2,202 cases and 25 deaths for Potter, and 477 cases and still six deaths in Randall.
In the two counties, there have been a combined 15,203 tests performed, rising from 13,239 last week and from 11,342 the week before that, according to the Amarillo health department. Cases skyrocketed in early May, after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention came to town and, in the span of a week, nearly doubled the number of tests performed in the counties.
In total, the Lone Star State had more than 60,400 total confirmed cases and 1,611 total deaths, up from 53,000 cases and 1,460 total deaths last week. There had been more than 873,000 tests done in Texas as of Friday, up from 770,000 last week, and 623,000 the week before that, according to the state and the Hopkins tracker.
Nevada – Nevada National Security Site
There were 61 confirmed cases in Nye County, Nev., near the northwestern perimeter of the former Nevada Test Site, up two from 59 a week ago. Nye County has had one fatal case of COVID-19.
In Las Vegas and surrounding Clark County, which have most of the state’s cases and deaths, there were more than 5,700 cases and 320 deaths, up from 5,000 cases and 275 total deaths last week.
Statewide, Nevada had more than 8,200 cases and 406 deaths, up from 7,400 cases and 383 total deaths a week ago. The weekly increase in confirmed infections and fatal cases was higher this week than the week before. There had been more than 130,000 tests performed in Nevada, as of deadline, up from about 125,000 a week ago and 103,000 tests a week before that, according to the state and the Johns Hopkins tracker.
Nationwide
This week, the U.S. confirmed its 100,000th COVID-19 death. The first confirmed U.S. infection was reported in late January.
There were at deadline 101,622 confirmed fatal cases of COVID-19 domestically, up about 6,000 from some 95,000 confirmed deaths last week. The increase in fatal cases this week fell from the week before, when the Hopkins tracker tracked 10,000 new virus fatalities. The U.S. has long been, and remains, the most infected nation on Earth, with more than 1.7 million confirmed cases.
Since confirmation that the outbreak had hit the U.S., nearly people 400,000 domestically had recovered from their bouts with COVID-19, up from about 300,000 recoveries last week. There had been more than 15.5 million tests performed in the U.S., at deadline, up from 13 million last week and 10.3 million the week before.
