Department of Energy nuclear cleanup sites were tracking 76 confirmed active cases of COVID-19 as of Thursday, down 30 from last week and the lowest weekly case count since the fall.
The DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM) case numbers were last this low during early October. The figures provided via email from an EM spokesperson are also down significantly from the 132 recorded two weeks ago.
For much of January the EM numbers were above 400 after peaking at 477 for one week in December.
The Savannah River Site in South Carolina and the Hanford Site in Washington state, the rare EM sites that regularly post updates about positive cases online, reported lower numbers this week.
As of Friday morning, there were 17 Savannah River Site employees quarantined with COVID-19, down from 32 last week, according to a DOE website for the federal complex near the Georgia line.
Managers at Hanford learned of five positive coronavirus tests among employees this week, which is down from seven last week, according to a contractor-run website for Hanford.
While DOE says it is not compiling COVID-19 vaccination numbers for workers at its nuclear cleanup facilities, publicly available data for counties adjoining these federal sites might offer some clue.
A website called COVID Act Now reports that as of Thursday Los Alamos County, N.M., where the Los Alamos National Laboratory is located, 66% of the population is vaccinated and 52% are fully vaccinated. The website cited figures from the New Mexico Department of Health.
COVID Act Now is a non-profit formed in March 2020, which works with research centers at Harvard, Georgetown University and Stanford University. “Our data comes from official sources including the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, The New York Times, and official state and county dashboards,” according to the website’s “about” page.
By contrast, the two counties around Hanford have a much lower vaccination rate, according to the website. Roughly 35% of the people in Benton County, Wash., have received at least one dose and 29% were fully vaccinated. In neighboring Franklin County 27% have received one dose and 21% are fully vaccinated. The data comes from the Washington State Department of Health.
County figures are an imperfect guide because a DOE facility’s workforce can either overperform or underperform the surrounding area.
Nevertheless, the figures would tend to back up observations of two different industry sources who spoke this week with Weapons Complex Monitor, one who said Los Alamos National Laboratory is doing extremely well, and another who said Hanford faces some problems.
Both sources agreed EM is rapidly reaching the point where most of the workers “willing” to be vaccinated will have gotten their shots. The DOE office, which has its 16 cleanup sites employing maximum telework, has said it is encouraging but not ordering workers to take one of the vaccines that have been cleared for emergency use.
The occupational medical contractor for Hanford sent a memo to employees this week mildly admonishing people to remember to show up for their second shots. “Moderna vaccines are kept frozen, and once thawed for an appointment, they must be used within 12 hours and cannot be refrozen or saved for another day,” according to the letter from HPMC Occupational Medical Services.
Here is a rundown of vaccination numbers as of Thursday for several counties around EM sites, according to the COVID Act Now website.
- In Aiken County, S.C., (Savannah River), 32% of the public has been vaccinated with one shot and 26% are fully vaccinated (Source: CDC).
- In Roane County, Tenn., (Oak Ridge Site) 31% of the population has received one dose and 27% are fully vaccinated (Tennessee Department of Health)..
- In Eddy County, N.M., (Waste Isolation Pilot Plant), about 29% have received one dose and 22% are fully vaccinated (New Mexico Department of Health).
- In Pike County, Ohio, (Portsmouth Site), 31% have received one shot and 27% are fully vaccinated (Ohio Department of Health).
- In McCracken County, Ky., (Paducah Site), 40% of the population has received at least one shot and 33% are fully vaccinated (CDC)..
In the nation as a whole, 46% of the population or almost 153 million people have received at least one dose of vaccine, according to the website.
Nationally, the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention said this week fully-vaccinated people are safe to go mask-less in outdoor and most indoor settings. There was no immediate word from DOE on whether it would in turn relax COVID protocols at its facilities.
As of Friday morning, there have been about 32.9 million cases of COVID-19 in the United States since the pandemic began and more than 584,000 deaths have resulted, according to an online tracker run by Johns Hopkins University.
