Triumph Foods Testing (4-28-20)

Triumph Foods Testing (4-28-20)

A thousand workers at st.

Joseph's triumph foods have been tested for the coronavirus.

Good evening, i'm alan van zandt.

Official word is that 500 more employees were tested today-- this after 600 yesterday..

Kq2's madeline mcclain spoke with the team spearheading the testing effort.

Natssemi trucks rolling by the parking lot of the triumph pork processing plant in st.

Joseph open -- and the employees outside -- are lined up waiting for a covid-19 test.

Dr. francisco aleman, northwest health services: "i think what we are doing here is ahead of the curve and i think it's very proactive for triumph to be doing this.

This is the best way to capture and control any spread so this is an excellent operation that we are doing here because this is the best way to capture as many people as possible, as early as possible.as of saturday-- northwest health had tested less than 205 people total they needed a plan to 10 times as many people at triumph foods -- and do it in one week.

Rodney hummer, interim ceo, northwest health services: "you can see the cones are all distanced about 8 feet apart so as they wait in line they are maintaining social distancing which is best practice and as they process through the tent to get their labels and they they are processed up through the line by our staff and we have line monitors to increase efficiency and flow and as we see them come in we can immediately put them into to the next available slot."and there's been bumps in the road.

Rodney hummer, interim ceo, northwest health services: we had kind of a de-brief last night at 4:30 and kind of lessons learned.

What worked, what didn't work.

Tuesday they implemented changes to signs and process -- that already cut down time to test each worker.rodney hummer, interim ceo, northwest health services: for instance we moved our cones at the front of the entrance by a foot and added a little exit sign and that decreased our cycle times just by moving our cone one foot.in addition to process -- information changes weekly.

Like the cdc's new guidelines for covid-19 symptoms.dr. francisco aleman, northwest health services: "we used to think that loss of smell was a minority symptom but now its been present in quite a few patients."before it was just fever, shortness of breath and a cough.dr. francisco aleman, northwest health services:"the symptoms have changed and they updated that recently so that changes how we evaluate people for testing."and while the northwest crew needed to be trained and updated for testing generally -- that's completely different than what they are doing at triumph.testing at the plant is for workers with or without symptoms.dr. francisco aleman, northwest health services: "so i always tell people if i tell you something yesterday, it could be wrong today and there's new information we need to adapt to quickly."and -- of course -- when it rains it pours.rodney hummer, interim ceo, northwest health services: as you can see the flow is going smoothly and well.

Steve groshong with ems, he's my eyes in the sky and watching the weather for me with the national weather service and he's saying in about 3 hours we've got a potential storm front that could be moving in so he's got me on speed dial to monitor that so if bad weather does come in we have a plan.but despite all that health is trucking along.nats flying by it's goal of 500-600 a day.dr. francisco aleman, northwest health services: moving on and today is better than yesterday."joseph, madeline mcclain, kq2 results are still expected to take at least 24 to 48 hours to get back from the labs.

And once officials finally know how widespread the virus is -- that will alter how they will