States that host National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) production sites are among the first attempting an economic thaw, moving to reopen some businesses this week, as the number of confirmed active cases of COVID-19 across the agency dipped to 32.
That is down from 40 active cases last week, and from 51 the week before, a spokesperson for NNSA headquarters said on Friday. The semiautonomous Department of Energy agency has tracked a cumulative 65 cases at headquarters, nuclear weapons laboratories, production sites, and the Nevada National Security Site since the outbreak began. Of those, 33 people have recovered, and nobody had died, at deadline.
The NNSA does not say how many of its federal and contract employees are in quarantine, or how many people are unable to work while operations are reduced during the pandemic, meaning the affect of the disease on the nuclaer arsenal modernization program remains fuzzy.
Tennessee is one of the states that this week authorized some businesses to reopen. The NNSA’s Y-12 National Security Complex, in the eastern part of the state, is preparing to increase on-site work.
The facility, where the NNSA manufactures the uranium-powered secondary stages of nuclear weapons, has been in reduced mission-critical operations since April 14, meaning that just about everyone left on site is involved directly with nuclear weapons work. For Y-12, that includes the construction workers building the Uranium Processing Facility.
But this week, a spokesperson for Y-12 prime Consolidated Nuclear Security said the site wants to ramp back up to normal operations soon, while still allowing those who can telework without difficulty to do so. The transition began this week.
“[T]he Y-12 National Security Complex will begin a staged transition back to normal operations with maximized telework,” the spokesperson said Thursday. “[T]he prevalence of the virus in the community has steadily decreased, as has the number of employees under quarantine because of a potential exposure to COVID-19.”
Typically, the number of quarantines on a site is vastly greater than the number of active cases, as NNSA facilities almost all require employees who might have been in contact with the infected to remain in isolation for two weeks.
As employees return, Y-12 will still require them to maintain 6 feet of recommended social distance when possible, avoid congregating in groups, and receive regular temperature screenings. Y-12 employs about 6,000 people, including the people building the Uranium Processing Facility.
On the other hand, the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, will remain in mission-critical operations for the time being. Most of the workers on-site are doing hands-on weapons work: making sure weapons are still functioning as intended, making minor and major modifications to components or entire weapon systems. Select essential support jobs are also reporting in to maintain communications and IT systems, among other jobs, while the plant is short-handed, according to a public summary of Pantex’s continuity of operations plans. Consolidated Nuclear Security manages both Y-12 and Pantex. Pantex, which employs about 3,500 people, is the sole NNSA assembly and maintenance hub for nuclear weapons.
The Kansas City National Security Campus in Kansas City, Mo., which sits in the middle of a more severe outbreak than either Pantex or Y-12, was the first of the main NNSA production sites to dial operations back up. Last week, the manufacturing hub for non-nuclear nuclear weapons parts started bringing an undisclosed number of its 4,000 plant workers back in. It is instituting temperature screenings, erecting plastic barriers between some workstations, and providing personal protective equipment for some people who could not maintain 6 feet of distance while doing their jobs.
In Tennessee, Texas, and Missouri, reopening businesses will have to limit the number of customers they serve at once. The states are also requiring employers to perform symptom-screening, but not testing, for COVID-19, and continue to practice social distancing and telework when possible. In Tennessee, Knox County nearby Oak Ridge, plus several other counties, will not partially reopen just yet.
Meanwhile, Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette said Friday in an all-hands email that the agency is “Planning for an eventual return of federal employees and onsite support service contractors to our physical office space has begun because this will be a complex process.” Brouillette said he created “an integrated team” to develop the plan, which can be tailored to individual sites.
The NNSA’s nuclear weapons laboratories are also trying to figure out how to inch back toward normal operations, though all three still had most of their workforce at home, as of deadline. That marks more than a month since the mass telework exodus from the labs.
The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California has four confirmed positive cases of COVID-19, the same number the lab has reported for the last two weeks. Livermore, which sent substantially all of its employees home in March, returned about 800 more people of its roughly 6,300 employees back on site in April, a spokesperson said Friday.
The Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico on Thursday issued an institutional policy for managing COVID-19 exposure for workers on-site. The world’s first nuclear-weapons lab in April started bringing people back to work at the Plutonium Facility, the lab’s expanding pit factory, and Technical Area 22, where it makes detonators. Los Alamos employs some 12,700 employees and contractors, most of whom are still working off-site.
Los Alamos is currently rationing its existing stockpile of personal protective equipment, because “the laboratory is encountering multiple delays in consistently being able to fill orders” for items such as disposable coveralls, gloves, N95-style masks and hand sanitizer, among other things, according to the lab’s new COVID-19 policy.
This week, NNSA awarded a contract for 225,000 KN-95 personal respirator masks, which the agency plans to provide to NNSA and DOE sites as needed. NNSA headquarters in Washington wants the vendor, the suburban Atlanta-based small business American Dream Builders LLC, to deliver the masks in about two weeks.
Los Alamos has seven confirmed cases of COVID-19 among its workforce, a spokesperson said Friday, including three people who work for site management and operations contractor Triad National Security: the coalition of the University of California, Battelle Memorial Institute, and Texas A&M University, with industry subcontractors Fluor and Huntington Ingalls Industries. The site is piloting a program to test its employees for COVID-19, but there’s no firm date for a rollout, the lab spokesperson said.
South of Los Alamos in Albuquerque, the Sandia National Laboratories continues in a holding pattern, with about 75% of its roughly 14,000 employees teleworking, as they have for about two weeks now. Like the other labs and sites, Sandia has required people working essential national security missions to report to in to work.
The labs complex has also started testing its own workforce, both at its Albuquerque and California campuses, though it won’t say how many employees it has tested. People reporting to work on-site generally have gotten first priority for in-house tests. Sandia had 11 confirmed cases of COVID-19 at deadline Friday, unchanged from last week, a spokesperson said. The lab had no plans to bring more people back to the site, as of Friday.
Following is a 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. case 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 individuals tested.
Kansas City, Mo. – Kansas City National Security Campus
The city so far has a total of 545 total confirmed cases and 16 deaths, up from 461 confirmed cases and 15 deaths last week. Missouri had more than 7,500 cases and 329 total deaths statewide, up from 6,500 confirmed cases and 253 deaths a week ago. There had been 65,000 tests performed in Missouri as of Friday, up from about 50,000 a week ago.
Missouri planned to allow all businesses to reopen Monday, as long as they can practice social distancing with the federally recommended 6 feet between patrons, according to Gov. Mike Parson (R).
New Mexico – NNSA Albuquerque, Albuquerque; Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque; Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos
New Mexico had about 3,410 confirmed total cases and 123 deaths at deadline, up from 2,400 cases and 78 total deaths a week ago. Bernalillo County, near Albuquerque and Sandia, had more than 800 confirmed positive cases and 35 deaths at deadline, up from more than 600 cases and 31 deaths a week ago. More than 67,800 tests had been performed in New Mexico, at deadline, up from about 41,000 a week ago, and 33,000 the week before that, according to the state.
Sandia has been able to test its own employees in Albuquerque, and Livermore, Calif., for about the past three weeks, though it will not say how many employee tests it had done. Sandia contracts its sample collection out to AB Staffing Solutions of Gilbert, Ariz., and analyzes the tests at its own labs in Albuquerque. The lab is also authorized to analyze samples collected from the general public, but had not done so at deadline, a spokesperson said Friday.
Los Alamos County held steady week over week at six total confirmed cases and no deaths.
Cases in the counties surrounding Los Alamos rose this week, though by smaller numbers than in previous weeks. Sandoval County had 389 confirmed cases and 13 deaths at deadline, up from 345 confirmed cases and eight deaths a week ago. Sandoval has a worse outbreak than any other county nearby Los Alamos.
Taos County had 18 confirmed cases and no deaths this week, up from 17 cases and no deaths last week. Rio Arriba had 14 cases, up from 11 cases last week. Santa Fe, N.M., south of Los Alamos, had 100 confirmed total cases, up from 96 confirmed a week ago. Nobody had died from COVID-19 in Santa Fe, at deadline.
Oak Ridge, Tenn., Anderson County – Y-12 National Security Complex
There were at deadline 28 confirmed cases and one death in Anderson County, Tenn., which includes the Y-12 National Security Complex. That is up from 23 confirmed cases a week ago, with no new deaths. By confirmed cases, that is one of the mildest outbreaks of any NNSA host county.
COVID-19 infections in Tennessee rose sharply to almost 10,735 confirmed total cases and 199 total deaths from 8,300 cases and 171 deaths a week ago. There had been about 177,600 tests performed Tennessee at deadline, up from 123,000 last week and 81,000 the week before, according to the state.
Livermore, Calif., Alameda County – Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (including Sandia, Calif.)
There were fewer new cases but more deaths nearby the Livermore lab, in Alameda County this week than last. Alameda had more than 1,603 confirmed cases and 60 total deaths at deadline, up from 1,350 confirmed cases and 46 deaths a week ago. Last week, the lab’s host county counted more new cases and more fatal cases than the week before.
Nearby San Francisco had more than 1,499 confirmed cases and 25 total deaths, up from 1,300 confirmed cases and 21 deaths a week ago. Los Angeles had the most deaths in California: about 1,120 at deadline, up almost two thirds from 800 last week. The death toll in Santa Clara, Calif., some 30 miles south by road from Livermore, was 111 as of Friday, up from 95 deaths a week ago.
California, the largest and most populous state in the union, had almost 49,000 confirmed cases and almost 2,000 total deaths at deadline, compared with 39,500 confirmed cases and 1,500 total deaths a week ago.
Aiken, S.C., Aiken County – Savannah River Site
Aiken, S.C., had about 99 confirmed cases at deadline Friday, with six deaths. That’s up from 84 cases and five deaths a week ago.
South Carolina overall had more than 6,000 confirmed cases and 244 total confirmed deaths this week, up from about 5,000 confirmed cases and 150 deaths last week. There had been about 56,500 tests performed in South Carolina as of deadline, up from about 44,500 tests a week ago and 35,000 tests the week before that.
Amarillo, Texas, including Potter and Randall counties – Pantex Plant
Potter and Randall counties near Amarillo had by deadline logged 712 cases between them: 499 for Potter and 213 for Randall. That’s another sharp rise for Pantex’s neighbors, up from a combined 358 cases a week ago, when Potter had 221 and Randall had 137. Potter County had eight COVID-19-related deaths, up from five a week ago, while Randall County had three, flat compared with last week.
Texas had more than 29,200 cases and 816 total deaths this week, up from about 23,500 cases and 604 deaths. There had been more than 351,700 tests done in Texas as of Friday, up from 225,000 last week and 150,000 the week before that, according to the state.
Texas planned to allow all retail stores, restaurants, movie theaters, and malls to reopen on Friday. However, these businesses will only be able to admit customers equal to “25% of their listed occupancy,” according to Gov. Greg Abbott’s office.
Nevada – Nevada National Security Site
Nevada had more than 5,200 cases at deadline, with 243 total deaths, up from 4,200 cases 195 total deaths a week ago. There were 37 confirmed cases in Nye County, Nev., near the northwestern perimeter of the former Nevada Test Site, seven more than a week ago. Nobody had died of COVID-19 in Nye County at deadline.
In Las Vegas and surrounding Clark County, which have most of the state’s cases and deaths, there were more than 3,970 cases and 202 total deaths, up from 3,300 cases and 163 total deaths last week. There had been about 43,500 tests performed in Nevada, as of Friday, up from about 27,000 tests a week ago, according to the state.
The U.S. still had more confirmed COVID-19 cases than any other nation on Earth at deadline, but the increase in new cases per day, nationally, was trending down — in other words, the domestic curve appears to be flattening, according to the data tracked by Hopkins.
From late March to early April, the increase in new confirmed COVID-19 cases per day steadily and sharply rose. In April, on the other hand, that upward trend slowed — albeit at a high level — with new cases fluctuating between 30,000 and 35,000 a day all month, sometimes rising and sometimes falling. There was no rapid, uninterrupted spike last month that equaled the one observed in late March.
The U.S. had about 1.07 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 at deadline, with more than 62,000 confirmed deaths: about 12,000 more deaths than last week. The increase in fatal cases this week was slightly less than the increase tracked the week before.
