“He’s proud of what he does. Noem announced last week that the testing would begin once at least 2,000 people signed up. The first case arrived when the pandemic was in full swing, with much of the country shutting down and companies everywhere changing the way they worked. “When they had their first case, I don’t think they acted accordingly.”He kept the mood light around his children, especially when they expressed concern. For weeks, he’d been taking precautions to minimize the chances of exposing his mother and brother at home. A BuzzFeed News investigation has uncovered new information showing the company did little to inform or protect employees during the critical two weeks after the first case at the plant surfaced. Outside the US, the company has facilit… “I’ve never seen him so tired.”On April 10, Michael Bul Gayo Gatluak, a 22-year-old immigrant from South Sudan, clocked in at the hog kill department on the sixth floor. Those with a fever were sent home with instructions for where to get tested.When she asked him if everyone else was done too, he shook his head and said, “Others still need to go in tomorrow.” ●Cruz’s mother, four of her uncles, and an aunt have all worked at the plant for more than two decades since migrating from Guatemala; one of those uncles tested positive two weeks after Cruz’s mother did.Birhe and her cousins were used to seeing their parents come home from work exhausted, plopping down on the couch to rest before dinner, going to bed early for 6 a.m. shifts. He washed his hands regularly and sanitized everything he came into contact with, “from doorknobs to stair rail, the handles, countertops,” he said. Then, with confirmed cases rising quickly, Smithfield introduced new safety protocols but applied them unevenly across the plant’s departments, leaving hundreds of workers exposed.Birhe was 6 when her mother started working at the plant 16 years ago, after emigrating from Ethiopia, where she owned a café. “These facility closures will also have severe, perhaps disastrous, repercussions for many in the supply chain, first and foremost our nation’s livestock farmers.”Presented with a detailed list of questions, the spokesperson said that it was “purposefully misleading” to portray Smithfield “as reacting to a positive case rather than the very proactive approach” that the company took to the pandemic when it began, but she did not contest any specific facts.Katie Baker is an investigative reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in London.The Smithfield Foods pork plant in South Dakota is closed indefinitely in the wake of its coronavirus outbreak.The company warned of the economic impact of an extended shutdown.Eighteen days after the first case, once 238 workers had tested positive, Smithfield paused operations on all floors for 48 hours to deep-clean the plant, as well as install dividers at workstations and plexiglass shields on cafeteria tables. For her father, who began at the plant 15 years ago after migrating from Mexico, “it wasn’t an option if you go to work,” she said. "There was no social distancing occurring on the lines from at least before March 26, to when some measures like taking temperatures outside of the plant before employees had to come in, took place on Monday, April 6."Islam said workers claim to have been "inches apart" - but the company insisted only a "small number of employees" at their Cudahy and the Martin City plants tested positive.These emergency measures included the addition of sanitizing stations, more cleaning and the installations of plexiglass barriers."This is why our government has named food and agriculture critical infrastructure sectors and called on us to maintain operations and normal work schedules.The news comes after 518 employees and 120 of their family members received the damning diagnosis.Do you have a story for The US Sun team?"It highlights the interdependence and interconnectivity of our food supply chain. But we do not have a magic wand.""The closure of our Martin City plant is part of the domino effect underway in our industry," said Smithfield president and CEO Kenneth M. Sullivan.News Corp is a network of leading companies in the worlds of diversified media, news, education, and information services."The first death of a Smithfield employee that just occurred has really shaken the community and employees as a whole," Islam said.Meeting indoors banned for 4.5MILLION across Manchester, Lancs & YorksCorona outbreak at Iceland distribution centre as 51 staff test positive They filed through hallways and staircases, joining teams from other floors in the sixth-floor cafeteria, which is mostly staffed by immigrants from Latin American countries. The outbreak spread faster than at any other plant.Smithfield workers and their relatives now account for more than half of South Dakota’s confirmed cases, a pool of residents who may soon have the option to volunteer as test subjects for the nation’s first statewide clinical trial for hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug promoted by President Donald Trump as a potential coronavirus treatment but which has not yet been proven as effective against the virus.