There are 194 active cases of COVID-19 across the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup complex as of Thursday.
The number represents an increase of 53 over the 141 active cases a week ago, a DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM) spokesperson said by email. It also means that the number of active cases has increased more than three-fold since early October, when the figure was 61.
It is the latest indicator that the 16 Cold War and Manhattan Project properties overseen by EM are far from immune to the ongoing surge in new cases in the United States and in much of the world.
There have been 21 cases reported at the Hanford Site in Washington state over the past week, including 11 employees who informed management Thursday they have tested positive for COVID-19. Also, 32 other employees reported Thursday that they were tested for the virus, according to a post on the facility’s emergency operations website, which is run by site support-services contractor Mission Support Alliance.
That makes for a total of 216 confirmed positive cases at Hanford, based on daily bulletins posted on the website, plus a public assessment offered in early October by the site’s top federal manager, Brian Vance.
As of Friday morning there have been a total of 686 cases of COVID-19 reported at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, which represents 47 more than a week ago when the number was 639 cases among its workforce. 618 have recovered and been cleared to return to work.
Hanford and the Savannah River Site both have workforces of roughly 11,000. Hanford is solely an EM site, where Savannah River has both cleanup and National Nuclear Security Administration operations.
Meanwhile, 20 new cases of COVID-19 were reported at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico between Nov. 4 and Nov. 10, the site’s prime contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership said via Twitter on Thursday. Of that number, 17 work for either the prime contractor or one of its subcontractors and the other three work for DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office or its contractors, according to the release.
There were only four new cases the prior week at the waste disposal site.
The total number of infections at the southeastern New Mexico transuranic waste site now stands at 104 so far in 2020. Roughly half of the individuals —49 —have recovered and been cleared to return to work, according to the release.
As of Friday at noon, the United States has now logged more than 10.6million cases and 242,000 deaths, according to an Internet dashboard run by Johns Hopkins University.
