In the hunt for access to Covid vaccines, big employers like Tyson Foods are faring no better than many individual Americans. They usually wait due to limited supplies.
The meat processing company has received the largest amount of vaccines this week and is conducting vaccinations for workers at its plants in Missouri, Illinois and Virginia. But it’s only 1,000 doses in the three states.
Executives say they’ve been given 25 to 50 doses at a time so far this month to inoculate their corporate health workers and employees over the age of 65
“We are not turning down any opportunity to get a vaccine for our team members,” said Tom Brower, Tyson’s senior vice president for health and safety.
However, the options are limited. With 120,000 employees in two dozen states, the company has nowhere gotten access to enough stock to keep vaccination clinics on a larger scale.
“We come to these jurisdictions to ask for, you know, 1000 or 1500 doses,” said Dr. Daniel Castillo, chief medical officer of Matrix Medical Network, Tyson’s occupational health provider who has conducted on-site testing for the meat packer.
Even in states that now grant access to vital workers to be vaccinated, uncertainty about vaccine supplies leaves major employers hanging; local health departments cannot provide them with a timeline for when they will be granted access.
“They don’t know, sometimes they go in how much they will actually have to allocate to us. And so that’s part of the challenge that we really don’t have that line of sight,” said Castillo.
Tyson and rival meat packers JBS and Smithfield Foods came under fire early in the pandemic due to widespread Covid outbreaks in their facilities. At Tyson’s pork processing plant in Iowa, managers were fired after a probe determined they had bet on how many workers would get sick. The congress has started an investigation into safety incidents at the meat packers. Tyson and the other companies are working with the probe.
Since the outbreak of the pandemic, more than 12,500 Tyson employees have been infected with the corona virus, according to the watchdog group Food & Environment Reporting Network. Tyson won’t confirm the numbers, but says the Covid-19 protocols it has undertaken have kept workers safe.
The company has partnered with Matrix Medical to conduct on-site tests to contain potential outbreaks, and has put in place safety measures such as plastic partitions to reduce potential exposure to production lines. Over the past year, they have also expanded on-site health clinics and launched a pilot program to provide copay-free primary care as part of a longer-term initiative to improve the overall health of workers.
While a number of companies are offering cash bonuses to incentivize workers to get the vaccine, Tyson has opted for persuasion, through an educational campaign to combat vaccine hesitation among his predominantly Latino and African American meat packers.
“We didn’t want to take the approach of making the vaccine mandatory. We really want to help team members make informed decisions for their own health care, their own safety,” Brower said.
It’s not the only major employer to run out of competition to track down vaccine doses. Amazon, Walmart, and others are urging federal and state officials to grant access for workplace vaccinations and even contact vaccine manufacturers for delivery, with little success so far.
“If every road leads to the same place, which is a scarce vaccine, regardless of the road, it’s going to be a challenge,” said Castillo.
The companies don’t want to be seen as people trying to jump across the border – they claim they can strain the system on individuals by vaccinating their large worker population. In the meantime, Tyson now gives their employees four hours of paid time off to get a vaccination elsewhere, if they can get an appointment.