Triumph Foods in St. Joseph Archives

Parson emphasizes safety and expanded COVID-19 testing, during stops at two mid-Missouri businesses

May 8, 2020 By Brian Hauswirth

Missouri’s governor is praising employees and customers at two Jefferson City businesses, for taking the COVID-19 threat seriously.

Missouri Governor Mike Parson toured the Orscheln Farm and Home store in Jefferson City on May 7, 2020 (photo from Missourinet’s Brian Hauswirth)

Governor Mike Parson visited HyVee and Orscheln Farm and Home on Thursday morning, meeting with managers and employees about the state’s re-opening.

“You see the screens, the barriers that are put up between the cashiers and the customers,” Parson says. “You know, the availability of the sanitizers there.”

The governor also praises the HyVee grocery store for its senior shopping hours of 6-8 a.m, as well as social distancing markers at checkout lanes.

After stopping at HyVee, the governor and a few staffers traveled a few miles away to the Orscheln store on Missouri Boulevard. It’s a newly-remodeled store, which sells items like farm supplies, livestock feed, lawn and garden equipment, farm toys, tools and sporting goods.

The president of Moberly-based Orscheln, Marc Johnson, drove to Jefferson City to join Parson at the event. Johnson tells Missourinet safety is his top priority, for employees and customers.

“I think our customers are understanding that they have to keep the social distancing and they’re self-regulating, if you will,” he says.

Orscheln operates 165 stores in 11 states, including 45 stores across Missouri. Its corporate office and distribution center are in Moberly, which is north of Columbia.

Parson also spent ten minutes at Orscheln, answering questions from Capitol reporters.

He says the state continues to try to do more coronavirus testing, emphasizing that expanding the testing is one of his top priorities. The governor notes it’s one of the four essential pillars of the “Show Me Strong Recovery Plan.”

“We need to do a much better job of stockpiling to be able to do tests, and with all the new things, the Abbott equipment and everything that’s coming out, you’re going to see a much better job of that,” says Parson.

The governor says the state now has the capability of performing about 50,000 tests each week.

He praises the response from the state Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) to what’s happened at Triumph Foods in northwest Missouri’s St. Joseph, and says DHSS will be in St. Louis soon for a larger random sampling of about five hundred residents.

UPDATE: 359 workers at Triumph Foods in northwest Missouri have tested positive for COVID-19

May 2, 2020 By Brian Hauswirth

(Reporter Brent Martin at Missourinet St. Joseph affiliate KFEQ contributed to this story)

State health officials have announced that 359 employees and contract workers at a massive pork processing plant in northwest Missouri’s St. Joseph have now tested positive for the coronavirus.

The state Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) announced the latest statistics on Saturday, adding that results from the comprehensive testing continue to arrive on a rolling basis. Additional updates are expected this weekend.

The Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) logo (image courtesy of DHSS)

A spokeswoman for DHSS, Lisa Cox, tells Missourinet the vast majority of the Triumph Foods employees were asymptomatic.

Governor Mike Parson appeared Friday on Missourinet St. Joseph affiliate KFEQ Radio (AM 680), telling “Hotline” host Barry Birr that Triumph Foods became a test of sorts for Missouri’s new strategy of rapidly deploying COVID-19 test kits to a potential hot spot, in an effort to prevent a massive outbreak.

“And that’s the first big major test that we’ve done,” the governor tells KFEQ. “Most of the people that have tested positive are asymptomatic. So, the good news to that is we know who they are, they’re not sick, so we can take action with that.”

State officials sent test kits to St. Joseph and contracted with Northwest Health Services to test all 2,800 Triumph employees, whether they displayed symptoms or not.

The Triumph Foods plant in St. Joseph processes one-and-a-half billion pounds of pork annually. The governor says it’s a key part of the national food chain.

DHSS Director Dr. Randall Williams does not support shutting the plant down. He told Capitol reporters in Jefferson City on Thursday that the department is doing what they do in public health, including epidemiology contact tracing, isolating and quarantining.

The DHSS has partnered with St. Joseph health officials, Northwest Health Services and Mosaic Life Care to offer coronavirus testing to all employees and contract staff at Triumph.

Any employees who are still wanting to be tested can do so next week through Northwest Health Services’ mobile testing site.