Increase in my local town

[Twospaniels]

Cases have tripled in the last week in Newark on Trent. The Bakkavor dessert factory seems to be a hot spot, they employ 1600 people. They blame it on what people get up to away from the workplace, rather than a problem in the workplace.
This is probably true, you can put all the rules in place at work and they will be adhered to, but you can’t stop people meeting up at home etc ☹️

There's a definite link to food factory working and outbreaks I think. A creamery has reported an outbreak in the Dales today.

Perfect conditions for transmission apparently

Cynically, I’d say it’s hardly surprising that a factory which doesn’t want the expense and inconvenience of adapting its premises is eager to blame what its workers do outside the factory for transmission rather than their working environment being an excellent one for spreading.

Factories, slaughterhouses and processing plants have been hotspots throughout the pandemic, and I don’t see how we prevent that being the case. We can’t close down food supply and manufacturing and factories are a perfect storm: enclosed, crowded, suitable conditions for viral spread, workers most likely to be poorly educated, non-native speakers of English who haven’t quite got the message about how to prevent spread, and unpaid for any time they take off if they do display symptoms.

Yes, viruses tend to spread in workplaces, especially with lots of people working closely together in an enclosed space. That's always been the case and we've always just accepted it, but now every single time it happens it's reported, agonised over, there's talks of what new stupidities we'll have to deal with because of it. Meanwhile all the people infected are still infected, because, guess what, you can do a certain amount to prevent a virus going around and then after that it's matter of luck and circumstance. Again, that's how it's always been. It's just that now everyone has been brainwashed into having such tunnel vision as to have a constant, wearying focus on this one virus, which is going around and will continue to go around, possibly forever. At some point this sort of 'news' will just have to stop being news, because there are other things in the world, there are other things in life.

I know someone who was working in a factory that makes food packaging .. he as initially furloughed but called back a few weeks ago and to his horror saw no changes in place .. no SD . No ppe and as the majority of the employees were saying they would not take time off self isolating as they couldn’t afford it as they wouldn’t be paid but he knew that most were still socialising a lot outside work

Have a day off daily

Another contributory factor is travel to work. Lots of car sharing. So even if there are measures in place once inside the factory, the virus has already been passed on to the 3 or 4 other people in the car with you.

"This is probably true"

Why is it true, when every other country has identified outbreaks in factories? People aren't being protected at work and the government is playing the blame game, starting with the BAME community.

BREAKING: Lockdown tightened in Preston

Published on Aug 7, 2020
Preston is the latest part of the UK to face a tightening of lockdown measures after rising coronavirus infection rates were reported in the city.

The rolling seven-day rate of new cases of COVID-19 in the Lancashire city has risen from 20.3 per 100,000 people in the seven days to 27 July to 32.8 in the seven days to 3 August. A total of 47 new cases have been recorded in that period.

The restrictions around Greater Manchester will be extended to the city, meaning different households cannot meet indoors.