By the time Merced County public health officials were able to track down accurate information about a COVID-19 outbreak at a local Foster Farms plant last year, seven workers were already dead, and more would die in the following weeks.
In mid-August, when the California Department of Public Health requested the number of positive cases, hospitalizations, and deaths that were tied to the growing outbreak at the company’s plant in Livingston, Merced County’s supervising epidemiologist Kristynn Sullivan passed along the data, with the disclaimer that officials had just learned of five previously unreported deaths on Aug. 14.
“They [Foster Farms] did not inform us of any hospitalizations prior to 8/14, and as you know they did not inform the additional five fatalities until 8/14,” Sullivan wrote in an Aug. 20 email.
Minutes later, Dr. Salvador Sandoval, the county’s health officer, sent a follow-up email saying he’d just been informed by a union representative that another worker at the plant had died the night before: “Foster Farms hasn’t let us know about him. So now we have 8 deaths.”
In newly released emails from that time period, Merced County health officials repeatedly expressed skepticism about the outbreak information they were receiving from the poultry company, saying they believed the company hadn't tested its entire workforce and was not providing reliable data. Ultimately, nearly 400 workers were sickened in connection to the Livingston outbreak, nine of whom died.
The information comes to light as Foster Farms argues, in an ongoing court case, that further oversight of the company’s efforts to protect its workers from COVID-19 is unwarranted.