The seventh employee to test positive for COVID-19 at the pilot isolation plant announced Monday that the pandemic continued to spread in New Mexico.
Nuclear Waste Partnership, the contractor hired through the U.S. Department of Energy, reported that one of its workers, the third according to public records, had tested positive for the virus after falling ill.
The other 4 instances of wiPP concerned subcontractors’ workers.
The NWP worker works on the WIPP site, reads a press release, and WIPP follows the contractual and fitness protocols that follow the positive result.
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It was unclear if any other workers were exposed to the employee who tested positive after they fell ill.
“As always, the health and safety of the WIPP workforce remains the top priority of the Department of Energy (DOE) and Nuclear Waste Partnership, and WIPP continues to work with all contractors to ensures Centers for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines are followed,” the release read.
The second Nuclear Waste Partnership employee reported to have tested positive was on July 21.
That employee, who also worked at the WIPP site, fell ill on July 11 but hadn’t been to the WIPP site since July 7, per a news release.
No other employees were exposed to that worker, the release read.
On July 9, an employee of contractor CAST Specialty Trucking who worked for WIPP at a truck terminal in Carlsbad tested positive for COVID-19, but reported that he had no regime interactions with WIPP staff.
Previously, a Nuclear Waste Association tested positive in June, and one of the constructors Inc. subcontractors tested positive in May.
An employee of the granite construction subcontractor produced a positive result also in May.
The first positive verification for a WIPP-associated employee virus took a position in April in the form of an employee of the Carlsbad Technical Assistance Contractor (CTAC), who leads THE DOE’s external operations in Carlsbad to oversee WIPP’s activities.
On Monday, the State of New Mexico announced 117 new cases of the virus with five cases in Eddy and 14 cases in Lea County.
The WIPP facility sits in Eddy County near the border to Lea County.
Doña Ana County had the most new cases with 27, followed by 18 new cases in Bernalillo County.
One new death from the virus were reported: a man in his 60s from Doña Ana County, bringing the state’s overall death toll to 655.
On Monday, the instances became known as recovered through the New Mexico Department of Health.
Adrian Hedden can be reached at 575-628-5516, [email protected] or @AdrianHedden on Twitter.