Hanford has had 175 cases of COVID-19, but no known site outbreak

The Hanford nuclear reservation has had 175 confirmed cases of COVID-19 reported in its workforce of 11,000, according to Department of Energy Hanford manager Brian Vance.

That’s 1.6% of workers or a rate of 159 cases per 10,000 workers.

The rate for the state Washington is 120 cases per 10,000 people, but both Benton and Franklin counties, where most Hanford employees live, have higher rates than the state.

Combined the two counties have a rate of 274 cases per 10,000 people, with rates highest in communities with many workers who have continued to report to work during the pandemic at food processing and agricultural jobs.

Hanford data shows that nearly all, if not all, of the Hanford workers testing positive were infected in the community, rather than at work, according to Hanford officials. No outbreak has been confirmed.

COVID prevention measures are enforced at the site, including wearing face coverings, social distancing and staggered shifts to lessen the amount of workers in one place, according to Hanford officials.

Hanford restricts access to a workplace when an employee reports that they have been tested for COVID, until it can be sanitized as a precaution. The same procedure is followed if an employee reports a positive test result if they have been in the workplace within the incubation period of the disease.

The site also is waiting for test results of 73 workers. It has had 596 test negative results reported since the start of the pandemic. About 25% of the positive test results were reported for workers who hadn’t been on site for weeks or months as they were teleworking or being paid to be on standby if they had a job that did not allow them to work from home.

Workers return to the site

All employees have been returned to work this week, after as few as 10% were allowed on the site starting in late March — to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus in the Tri-Cities community and to help reserve the nation’s short supply of personal protective equipment then for medical workers and first responders.

DOE has gradually returned more workers in a phased return to work plan, but wanted to return all workers to the site as the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security, or CARES, Act was set to expire at the end of September.

Among provisions of the federal legislation was allowing most of the workers at DOE sites such as Hanford to continue to be paid, even if they were not allowed to report to their job sites and had jobs that did not allow them to work from home.

The CARES Act has since been extended until Dec. 11.

With more workers now allowed back to work on site, about 60% of Hanford workers are reporting to work in person and about 40% continue to telework, Vance said at an on-line Hanford Advisory Board meeting Wednesday.

This story was originally published October 8, 2020 at 10:48 AM.