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WILMINGTON, N.C. (WECT) – On Thursday, state lawmakers voted to allow bars to reopen in outdoor spaces.

If it becomes law, House Bill 536 would override part of Gov. Roy Cooper’s most recent executive order that has closed bars since March.

Manager Robin Potts of the Dubliner Bar in Wilmington is ready to serve customers again, and he says they already have outside space ready to do it safely.

Potts says he’s come up with protocols to keep everyone safe in hopes that the governor would give the go-ahead before now.

“We have taken every precaution,” said Potts. “We even will offer our customers masks if they want one. How they’re going to drink with the mask on I have no idea, but we aren’t able to implement any of this until he (Gov. Cooper) takes this seriously.”

Bennett’s business partner Maaike Brandis isn’t optimistic about House Bill 536 allowing them to open anytime soon.

“We’ve gotten our hopes up last week when the governor announced Phase 2,” said Brandis. “We were all set, we had practices in mind for distancing, for cleanliness. I don’t want to get my hopes up again because it was a huge crushing blow.”

Copyright 2020 WECT. All rights reserved.

WILMINGTON, N.C. (WECT) – A coalition of more than two dozen media outlets filed a lawsuit on Thursday seeking the release of a list of records related to COVID-19 that the state had, so far, refused to provide.

The lawsuit names as defendants Gov. Roy Cooper and two of his Cabinet secretaries, Dr. Mandy Cohen, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, and Erik Hooks, secretary of the Department of Public Safety.

The complaint lists a total of 26 outstanding records requests — nine to DPS and 17 to DHHS — submitted by media outlets for records that could be helpful in reporting on COVID-19. All but one of the requests were submitted since the pandemic began.

Asked about the pending lawsuit during his press briefing on Thursday, Cooper said his office was committed to following the state’s Public Records Act, which requires production of all public records unless those records are specifically exempt by law.

“Number one, we want to make sure that we comply with the public records laws and I want to make sure that every agency in state government does that,” Cooper said. “Number two, this administration is making a lot of data available, particularly as it relates to COVID-19 and working hard to make sure that data is available more and more every single day.”

A media coalition had previously threatened to file a lawsuit seeking information regarding COVID-19 cases in nursing homes. But DHHS agreed to start releasing information identifying facilities with reported outbreaks, making a lawsuit unnecessary.

DPS spokesperson Pam Walker said Thursday afternoon that her agency had not yet been served with the lawsuit nor had the opportunity to review it. But she noted that DPS was one of the lead agencies responding to “an extraordinary and unprecedented event.”

“DPS will continue to respect the importance of providing public records and responding to requests for information,” Walker said in an email. “It will provide all public records as promptly as possible, despite the very challenging times we are in.”

At his press briefing Thursday, Cooper said he would ask his chief of staff to get him a list of outstanding records that his administration had not yet fulfilled.

Jim Thomas, an epidemiologist and associate professor at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, has said in a previous interview regarding DHHS’s refusal to release information that transparency is critical during a public health crisis.

“From the beginning of an event to its resolution and follow-up, public health authorities are expected to provide the news media with timely, accurate information and answers about the outbreak’s effects,” the CDC manual says.

The manual goes on to say that communicating during a public health investigation is key to gaining and maintaining the trust of the public. That trust may determine whether the public follows the advice and guidelines of health officials going forward.

This story was jointly reported and edited by Kate Martin and Frank Taylor, of Carolina Public Press; Ames Alexander, of The Charlotte Observer; Aaron Sánchez-Guerra and Jordan Schrader, of The News & Observer; Nick Ochsner, of WBTV; Emily Featherston, of WECT; Tyler Dukes, of WRAL; and Jason deBruyn, of WUNC-FM.

Copyright 2020 WECT. All rights reserved.

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP/WBTV) – North Carolina legislators are wading into Gov. Roy Cooper’s business reopening decisions.

The state Senate voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to let bars serve customers outdoors, despite his recent executive order keeping them closed due to COVID-19.

The state House joined with the Senate and approved legislation to allow “safe”outdoor seating for dining and beverage service in North Carolina at half of each bar’s total maximum occupancy.

Republicans and some business owners have questioned his orders, calling them uneven and devastating to the state economy. But most Senate Democrats joined GOP counterparts in sending the measure to the House.

“We’re six days into Phase 2 and on a day when we’re seeing some of our highest numbers of hospitalizations and death, the senate wants to open bars,” Gov. Cooper said. “These decisions are difficult, but they are made with daily briefings from doctors and healthcare experts.”

State health officials say the number of positive virus cases exceed 25,000.

On Thursday, North Carolina continued to see hospitalizations due to COVID-19 rise again on Thursday, according to the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services.

“I know that it is a tough time for business, and I believe that there will be a time when we can open bars, but that time is not now and I hope that the House will look at this carefully and senators will reconsider their choice about this,” Gov. Cooper said.

Copyright 2020 Associated Press. All rights reserved. WBTV contributed to this report.

NORTH CAROLINA (WECT) – Meatpacking plants are breeding grounds for COVID-19 among workers.

Plant employees typically stand shoulder-to-shoulder on their feet for hours at a time, shoving and cutting carcasses. The work causes them to breathe heavily, and if they have COVID-19, they are spreading virus into the air, said Dr. Lisa Gralinski, an assistant professor at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health.

Gralinski, who has studied coronaviruses since 2008, said these processing facilities house a combination of risk factors.

Workers then go home and into their communities, giving the virus a firm foothold.

A survey by journalists from seven newsrooms across the state showed local health departments are tracking COVID-19 outbreaks at meat processing facilities and reporting that information to the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services.

Without that oversight, and the reporting requirements that come with it, DHHS Secretary Dr. Mandy Cohen said she’s concerned both that the list may be incomplete and that its publication would discourage companies from cooperating going forward.

“What we are saying is this may not be the universe of all of them, so by naming them individually, I think we are calling out ones, frankly, that raised their hand and said, ‘We want to work with you,” Cohen said. “And we continue to want to encourage them to do that, because that’s the right thing to do from a public health perspective.”

Big employers, critical in food supply

The ramifications of outbreaks in North Carolina meat processing facilities could be widespread.

The industry also relies heavily on an immigrant labor pool. This population tends to live in higher-density housing, and health officials report difficulties with outreach due to language and cultural barriers, making this a population at high risk for spreading infectious diseases like COVID-19.

That not only supports the livelihood of thousands of North Carolina families, but puts pork and poultry on the plates of thousands more families around the world.

He described how these facilities are set up to be as lean as possible — good for efficiency in the name of the bottom line, but bad for social distancing, and for including much product storage to allow for any slack in the supply chain

“You’re four foot across the table from your colleague doing the same job, and you’re looking straight at them. So there’s a great way to contaminate each other right there,” he said.

Cohen acknowledged the concern that working conditions inside meat processing facilities can lead to a higher risk of spread.

Health officials collect data but claim no oversight role

Statewide tracking of outbreaks at these kinds of facilities appears to have fallen into a responsibility or oversight gap. DHHS has repeatedly said the industry is regulated by the N.C. Department of Agriculture, and that DHHS can play only a supporting role in helping to implement protections for employees.

But state agriculture department officials say their oversight applies only to the food, not the health of workers. State Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler repeatedly denied having authority to enforce any safety guidelines for workers at meat processing plants.

Troxler also said it’s the responsibility of the state’s health agency to document and record the number of COVID-19 cases at processing plants.

“COVID-19 is not a foodborne illness,” Heather Overton, assistant director for public affairs at the N.C. Department of Agriculture, said in a May 12 email. “Our meat supply is safe.”

“It is in everyone’s interest to have healthy workers,” she said, adding that a goal would be for all companies to “keep all workers well and minimize the risk of spread at the plants.”

In a public briefing, Cohen said the state very much wants to know about infections at meat processing facilities so it can help contain the virus. But there’s no lever she can pull to force them to cooperate.

“These industries are not ones that are required to report to our local health department or the state,” Cohen said.

“We find out about these largely because they come to the attention of the local health departments because we want them to. We want to offer our help and assistance, and make sure we slow the spread of the virus, so we very much want them to get in contact with us.

But the role that meat processing companies play in reporting numbers to local and state health officials remains unclear, as local health officials detail the systematic way they have collected this information.

Despite her comments at previous briefings, Cohen did acknowledge that state and local health officials have a process to trace outbreaks at meat processing facilities in an interview Tuesday for this story. Cohen said the state’s numbers come from the contact tracing process and not from reports submitted by the companies.

In Catawba County, health department spokeswoman Emily Killian explained that a nurse on the communicable disease team asks each person what their occupation is.

“When we enter the individual’s information into the state-level tracking software, we are also able to link a case to a known outbreak, even if it originated in another county,” Killian said.

She said that process plays out for all patients, including those in intensive care in the hospital. If someone is put on a ventilator, Killian explained, contract tracers at the health department will get the information from the hospital or a family member.

The process in Columbus County, which has 10 cases connected to meat processing facilities, was similar.

“These conversations can last anywhere from half an hour to an hour, and we go through, you know, their close connections where they work,” he said. “Ultimately for these 10, it was found that the only connection that we could find of COVID with that person would be at work, because they were around people who ultimately tested positive that they worked with.”

Despite this, the state is still not identifying the facilities publicly.

The worry, Cohen said, is that such cooperation will stop if the state begins identifying only the facilities that raise their hands.

“A lot of times, we’ve been able to bring testing on-site, or close to, and where testing has been done not just for the workers, but for their family members in that case,” Cohen said. “That’s what we want to happen. That’s exactly why we’re doing this work.”

“For the people working in these locations, they need to know what the infection rate is in their location and how concerned they need to be,” Thomas said. “They also need to know what steps the employer is taking to protect them.”

He also disagreed with a policy of withholding information because it is incomplete, which he said undermines the public’s essential trust in government.

Limited information released by DHHS, most local health departments

When workers of Randolph Packing tested positive for COVID-19, the Randolph County health department did what it could to help contain the spread.

In an email exchange, Randolph County wellness administrator Sam Varner complimented Greg Dronen, plant manager of the Asheboro meat-manufacturing facility, on the measures the facility took to prevent the further spread of the coronavirus, but warned him not to grow complacent.

“We appreciate all the efforts you and your team are taking to ensure a safer environment for your employees,” Varner wrote in a May 11 email. “However with the growing number of positive cases related to Randolph Packing’s workforce, more serious measures need to be addressed including the possibility of plant closure for 14 days.”

The exchange pulls back the curtain on how one county health department is handling outbreaks at meat processing plants — an important glimpse given the limited information coming from the state.

DHHS spokesperson Amy Ellis said the agency knew of more than 2,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 at meat-processing facilities in North Carolina as of Tuesday. Those cases are spread across 28 outbreaks in 18 counties: Bertie, Bladen, Burke, Chatham, Davie, Duplin, Hoke, Lee, Lenoir, Randolph, Richmond, Robeson, Sampson, Surry, Union, Wayne, Wilkes and Wilson.

Because that information does not break down case numbers by county, nor by meat-processing facility, reporters from the news collaborative contacted health departments across the state, but were still able to link only fewer than 400 cases to specific meat-processing facilities with information provided by those departments.

Smithfield Foods, in the town of Tar Heel in Bladen County, is the world’s largest pork processing plant, employing about 4,500. Its outbreak numbers have not been released by either the company or Bladen County health officials.

But other counties in the area have provided that information.

The Catawba County Health Department identified eight cases at a plant operated by Case Farms in Burke County and seven cases at the Tyson plant in Wilkes County, which has seen a case count in the hundreds before the company shut it down. In each of those cases, the employees worked at the plants in neighboring counties but lived in Catawba County.

But neither Burke nor Wilkes counties provided information on the number of employees at the plants in their county.

Wilkes County’s health department did not respond to a reporter’s inquiry.

“Burke County is not giving out the names and numbers within facilities,” spokeswoman Lisa Moore said. “If you want information regarding this information you will need to contact the corporate headquarters to get the information or message they want to disseminate.

In Chatham County, Mountaire Farms itself disclosed an outbreak of COVID-19 cases at its Siler City processing plant last month, and the state and county have worked to offer testing to employees and members of their households. But spokesperson Kara Dudley said county officials aren’t disclosing outbreak locations to protect privacy “and avoid the stigma that may come with identification.”

Piedmont Health CEO Brian Toomey told a reporter that the organization met with Mountaire and Chatham officials to coordinate testing, which Mountaire voluntarily wanted to conduct, resulting in 74 positive cases out of 340 tested. This was preceded by pressure from concerned community members and an online “Justice for Mountaire Workers” petition calling for sweeping protections for workers.

Toomey commended Mountaire for “setting a high bar” for poultry plants and wanting to work with Piedmont Health for testing in late April and hoped other plants would do the same.

Mountaire has not yet responded to requests for comment on its disclosure policies sent Wednesday.

Meat processing companies say they’re working with health officials

Reporters also reached out to meat processing companies for this story to gauge what involvement they had in reporting numbers to state and local health officials.

Each company said they were in discussion with health officials, and Smithfield Foods said it was reporting case numbers to health officials.

“We are strongly encouraging our employees to take advantage of this free testing. We continue to report all COVID-19 cases to state and local health officials, as well as the CDC,” the spokesperson said.

But a spokesperson for JBS USA, the company that owns the Pilgrim’s Pride brand, said in a statement last week that it was not reporting the number of cases identified at its facilities to health officials.

“Given the evolving nature of this situation, we are not attempting to publicly report the number of impacted team members,” spokesperson Cameron Bruett said. “What I can share is we are coordinating with local, state and public health officials, and we are following all CDC and OSHA issued guidance at the plant.”

However, both House of Raeford and Case Farms did say they were providing paid sick leave to employees who contract COVID-19. Neither company specified whether that benefit was being extended to contractors who work at the plant.

Along with Perdue and Mountaire, a spokesperson for Tyson Foods did not respond to an inquiry for this story but the company released a statement last week announcing the results of mass testing at its facility in Wilkes County.

“Of the 2,244 team members and contractors who work at the facility and were tested, 570 tested positive, the majority of whom did not show any symptoms and otherwise would not have been identified,” the company announced.

“As it is doing at the Wilkesboro facility, Tyson will disclose verified test results at other plants to health and government officials, team members and stakeholders as part of its efforts to help affected communities where it operates better understand the coronavirus and the protective measures that can be taken to help prevent its spread,” the statement said.

This story was jointly reported and edited by Kate Martin, Jordan Wilkie and Frank Taylor, of Carolina Public Press; Ames Alexander and Gavin Off, of The Charlotte Observer; Aaron Sánchez-Guerra and Jordan Schrader, of The News & Observer; Nick Ochsner, of WBTV; Emily Featherston, of WECT; Tyler Dukes, of WRAL; and Jason deBruyn and Celeste Gracia, of WUNC-FM.

Copyright 2020 WECT. All rights reserved.