Slaughterhouses are they of the foci of contamination of the coronavirus ?

In the Loiret, in the slaughterhouse of Fleury-lès-Aubrais, at least 34 people have been infected by the Covid-19. It is a little less than one employee in 10 there. All other employees will be screened here this Tuesday. In the Côtes-d'armor, another slaughterhouse met the same fate with 69 contamination, to a minimum. For many, its closure is not on the agenda because "even a temporary one, it would be a disaster", according to the mayor of the Led where is the slaughterhouse, Jacky Aignel, questioned by the AFP. He said, "600 people" in his municipality is working on 6500 inhabitants. A third slaughterhouse, in Vendée, is part of the same lift of heavy contamination.

read also : Covid-19 : more than 100 cases detected in two slaughterhouses

Beyond our borders also, slaughterhouses are seeing many cases among their employees. In Germany, there is one that already had more than 100 cases since the beginning of may. In other regions, several hundreds have been recorded since April. In the United States, several slaughterhouses - at least 115 also play the role of a focus of contagion. 5000 employees were contaminated, and four, responsible for enforcing the sanitary regulations, are deceased. In Brazil, in Spain or in Australia, the situation is the same. The question, then, is legitimate : the slaughterhouses support the transmission of coronavirus ?

According to Dr. Philippe Vermesch, president of the union of liberal physicians, in many of these cases would rather put on the account of "organizational". In the absence of specific studies, for the moment, he believes that "promiscuity important" that reigns in these slaughterhouses would be the cause of this high rate of contamination.

there are few workers in the slaughterhouse that are in contact with the live animals and those that are, are equipped as cosmonauts

Geoffrey Le Guilcher, journalist, author of Steak Machine

work conditions that prevent them sometimes, indeed, the respect of the rules of distancing. "There's a lot of promiscuity," confirms Geoffrey Le Guilcher, author of Steak Machine with editions de la Goutte d'or in 2017, the story of an infiltration of more than one month in a large slaughterhouse breton. "In the locker room, we all coast to coast, there are communal showers, a break room where we leave our masks and gloves outside, and generally, we are many to take our breaks at the same time," he says of his experience. According to the journalist, one of the questions that arises today, in the face of these many infections, it is whether the pace of slaughterhouses has been reduced.

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