Thousands of meatpacking workers in southwest Kansas continue to wait for any news about when they’ll get the COVID-19 vaccine.
That wait drags on even as some counties vaccinate college faculty, first responders and postal workers, and as Kansas launches a new program to get a first dose into the arm of every school worker by early April.
Meatpacking plants have been the state’s third-biggest source of coronavirus outbreaks, eclipsed only by long-term care facilities (such as nursing homes) and jails and prisons.
“Meatpacking workers have taken one of the hardest hits of this pandemic,” said Monica Vargas-Huertas, a political director for the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union Local 2 representing 7,000 meatpacking workers in two southwest Kansas counties. “They have been in the front lines from Day One.”
The factory-scale slaughterhouses stayed open when many other businesses closed under statewide stay-at-home orders last spring.
“They kept working, securing the food (supply),” Vargas-Huertas said, “and securing the economy of the state.”
But state officials say meatpacking facilities took steps that greatly reduced transmission within their walls. In the past two weeks, they say, the plants have seen no fresh coronavirus outbreaks involving five or more cases.
And Kansas simply doesn’t receive enough vaccines per week from the federal government to quickly vaccinate all essential workers.
Ashley Goss, deputy secretary for public health, says Gov. Laura Kelly wants to get children back to school as soon as possible because missing so much in-person contact with peers and educators can have long-term effects on learning and mental health.
“She’s had to make some really tough decisions,” Goss said. “And she feels very strongly for our school staff to be the next push.”
Kansas was receiving fewer than 100,000 doses a week from the federal government, though shipments should soon increase to about 115,000 a week.
To speed shots to school workers, Kansas is redirecting some doses from counties that have made more progress than others on vaccinating their residents.
For now, it will not do the same for meatpacking workers.
Kansas has some of the country’s most productive beef-packing plants. The industry drives the economies of Dodge City, Garden City and Liberal.
The meatpacking workers are largely immigrants and people of color. Mounting evidence from other states suggests people of color across the country aren’t receiving equitable access to the coronavirus vaccine.
Kansas will soon publish vaccination statistics that shed light on whether that holds true here, too.
