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By Vincent West
LAGUARDIE, Spain (Reuters) – All staff from the Spanish wine industry in Rioja-producing Alava will have to go through a coronavirus check before starting paintings to prevent COVID-19 outbreaks from endangering the harvest.
Pickers, who have dubbed the “mask harvest” in 2020, will get their own equipment, adding baskets and scissors, which cannot be exchanged, to the infections, said a spokeswoman for the Rioja Wine Regulatory Council.
The government of the Basque Country has forced the wineries to provide a list of workers, then the fitness branch performs the PCR tests.
Seasonal personnel living in precarious situations have been greatly affected by the coronavirus outbreaks in Spain this summer, which has led the government to impose local closures in fruit areas, which it must repeat at the beginning of the harvest season. .
“Until we get the result of the check, we can’t work,” Quintino Benigno, an employee of the wine industry, told Reuters at a makeshift check center in Laguardia, Alava, where other people were queuing in masks.
About 6,000 seasonal workers are hired in the Rioja harvest crusade in Alava in the Basque Country and in the neighboring region of La Rioja. In the latter case, detection is mandatory, however, there are COVID-19 prevention plans that come with the detection of several staff members.
Although coronavirus cases related to the agricultural sector have declined since the summer, official knowledge shows that they still account for 9. 9% of the total.
A momentary wave of coronavirus has put Spain, with the infection rate in Western Europe, in the spotlight.
Amid the uncertainty caused by falling sales and minimizing the number of tourists expected to enter wineries due to the pandemic, the Rioja Wine Regulatory Council did give estimates of how it expects the business to be affected.
“The wineries have already stated that they will buy grapes at lower cost and that the business is going according to COVID,” said winemaker Cristóbal Fulleda.
(Written through Emma Pinedo; Edited through Ingrid Melander and Janet Lawrence)