Iowa Meatpacking Plants Put Lives On The Line In Covid Pandemic

Shoulder-to-shoulder production lines. Crowded shift changes. Packed break and locker rooms. The environment of Iowa meatpacking plants proved the perfect place for COVID-19 to spread. Weak mitigation efforts by companies early in the pandemic made it worse. Thousands of workers became infected with the virus, some dying. Meatpacking infections spread into entire communities, workers giving the virus to spouses who worked in nursing homes or neighbors at the grocery store. The Tyson Foods plant in Waterloo saw more than 1,000 of its workers get the virus.