Local health officials wait for Harry & David test results

Local health officials wait for Harry & David test results

Jackson county fair thanks for joining us, i'm brian morton.

This is a story we've been tracking over the past few days.

Today newswatch 12's alicia rubin spoke with those two employers and jackson county public health about next steps.

Timber products and harry and david are both reporting outbreaks.

On newswatch 12 at 5, i gave you a closer look at the cases stemming from timber products in medford.

Timber products' cases emerged over a period of time, 3 out of 6 cases are not employees but had close contact with employees.

Timber products told me today that they haven't had any employees test positive since april.

Harry and david, however, is dealing with 5 cases all at once.

Three of the 5 positive cases are employees that work within the specialty foods area of the harry and david campus.

The other two cases were people who had close contact with employees.

Right now employees who have tested positive are under quarantine at home.

Dr. jim shames with jackson county public health says they will remain in quarantine until they are symptom-free for at least three days.

Those who have had close contact with those employees have been asked to quarantine for two weeks.

Other employees that work in the same area but did not have close contact with people who tested positive will stay home until their test results are recieved or at least until the end of the week.

Shames says: "we're buying ourselves enough time to be able to have them away from a congregate setting in the workplace once we get the test back we can sort of figure out what our strategy will be" the response of public health depends on how many of those tests come back positive.

Shames says: "at the moment we're not seeing any glaring exposures and so we're going to sort of follow our usual guidelines plus just trying to test everybody the vast majority of which have no symptoms just so we can get a handle on where we're at right now" we're at right now" a handle on where just so we can get a handle on where we're at right now" "osha has confirmed with newswatch 12 that they have recieved complaints about harry and david, timber products and masterbrand cabinents in grants pass -- in the last half hour we've learned that masterbrand cabinets has been fined 630-dollars by osha -- this is a developing story