Three more National Nuclear Security Administration employees have died from COVID-19, an agency spokesperson said this week, as active cases across the enterprise tricked down, despite more than 400 new cases cropping up.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapons agency said, some National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) sites are starting to distribute vaccines, though only to those who qualify under local guidelines.
“Several NNSA labs and sites have been approved by state and local authorities to serve as COVID-19 vaccine Point of Dispensing sites or PODs,” the NNSA spokesperson wrote in an email Friday. “Those select labs and sites are starting to receive initial allocations of vaccines and are vaccinating DOE/NNSA federal, contractor, and subcontractor employees in accordance with priorities set by state and local authorities.”
The new COVID deaths were employees of the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. This was the first COVID death the NNSA has confirmed at Pantex since the pandemic reached the U.S. a year ago. Los Alamos has now had three confirmed fatal cases, and Y-12 has had two.
Overall, the NNSA has tracked 4,213 confirmed positive cases of COVID-19 across the nuclear security enterprise, including federal employees and contractors. That’s up 401 cases from last week, though active cases fell by 130 as 528 people recovered.
National Laboratories Cases
Following are the reported numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases at NNSA nuclear weapons laboratories, and increases relative to the prior week, as provided Friday by the labs.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory:
Cases: 213 (+20). Livermore is the only lab that does not test its own employees.
Los Alamos National Laboratory:
Cases: 647 (+57; 488 people who got sick recovered, while two died).
Internal tests: 12,002 (+647; a lab spokesperson said Friday these on-site tests have resulted in 205 positive results).
Teleworking: Roughly 80% of all employees. Los Alamos started scaling back on-site operations in November, when a nationwide surge caused cases in New Mexico to soar.
Sandia National Laboratories:
Did not reply to a request for comment by deadline.
