Following the most recent COVID-19 outbreak in Auckland, Americold’s coolstore in Mt Wellington had to close with several cases of infection confirmed among its staff and their family members.
The employees who were positive cases are all in isolation, doing their contact tracing, and following all instructions.
Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said the Ministry of Health was still undertaking environmental and genomic testing to determine any potential link between the Melbourne Americold facility and the Auckland outbreak. Bloomfield said testing from the surface of the Mt Wellington Americold facility was being processed.
“I have also had contact from my counterpart in Victoria who has linked me with their lab there, that is doing some genome sequencing on some [COVID-19] cases of employees in an Americold cool store there in Melbourne,” Bloomfield said. “Just again to see if there is any possible linkage there, so we are looking at that possibility, it’s part of the overall puzzle and we are leaving no stone unturned.”
Ministry of Health staff were still at the Americold Mt Wellington plant over the weekend and were yet to advise when the site could be cleaned and reopened. Meanwhile, the world’s largest cold storage freight business was given the all-clear from the Ministry of Health to reopen their Auckland Airport site.
Americold has 179 temperature-controlled warehouses around the globe. Americold staff handle frozen products destined for grocery retailers and food service companies. However, they would be wearing PPE gear and gloves as part of handling of those products. The frozen items in the Americold coolstore also come with several layers of packaging that are removed at various stages. That means the goods consumers pick up in supermarkets are in wrapping that hasn’t been touched by anyone in the coolstore.
