The Danish meat giant Danish Crown announced on Saturday that it had shut down a large slaughterhouse in Denmark, due to a large outbreak which is approaching 150 cases of Covid-19 among the employees of this site.
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The Ringsted slaughterhouse, about 50 kilometers from Copenhagen, employs nearly 900 people and slaughters tens of thousands of pigs every week.
Of the 600 employees present, a first wave of tests had revealed 120 positive cases. Danish Crown then re-tested all negative cases, and 22 more cases were then detected, the company said in a statement. “ For this reason, we are closing the slaughterhouse for at least a week to try again to break the chain of transmission among site employees ,” writes Danish Crown.
All employees must confine themselves, says the company, one of the main Danish exporters and the largest processor of pork in Europe. Several European slaughterhouses have been hit by the coronavirus epidemic in recent months, especially in Germany.
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The Ringsted focus is the main asset in Denmark, where the number of cases has risen sharply in recent days. This resurgence prompted the government to abandon a planned relaxation of restrictive measures (concert halls and nightclubs) and, on the contrary, to prepare new ones.
Several dozen cases have been reported in Aarhus, the country's second largest city. Denmark is considering making the mask compulsory on public transport, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said on Friday, although the latter was not even recommended until recently.
