Coronavirus
Technology Solutions
New Mexico Converting Only Some Schools From
MERV 10 to 13
Foster Farms Closes Poultry Plant in California
Due to 193 Cases
JBS Protecting Older Workers Due to New Outbreak
Meat Processors Should Consider the Cleanrooms
International FFU Rather Than Partitions
Purar Offers Reusable Mask with Unique Features
M+H Air Purifier Used at Schools
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New Mexico Converting Only Some Schools From
MERV 10 to 13
Due to COVID-19
New Mexico public health guidelines have changed
the way many systems function; public schools
have changed their entire learning model.
Schools try to keep up with state guidelines,
including air filter regulations which pressure
schools to quickly accommodate.
As with many guidelines for COVID-safe
practices, the air filter requirements changed
over time. Initially, the New Mexico Public
Education Department required a MERV 9 or higher
in all schools. In September, however,
that requirement changed to a MERV 13 to match
advisory from the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention and the American Society of
Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning
Engineers.
MERV 13 filters are more effective in removing
viral particles from the air, helping to limit
the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, which
causes the COVID-19 disease.
A MERV 8 or MERV 9 is standard for most public
schools, according to Gabe Jacquez, deputy
superintendent of operations for Las Cruces
Public Schools.
Due to reports that MERV 13 filters wear down
ventilation systems and would cost much more to
schools whose budgets are already tight with
accommodations made for COVID-19 in other areas,
NMPED also allows the highest MERV filter that
the system is compatible with.
Jacquez said the district will be getting a
shipment of MERV 13 air filters in mid-November.
Currently, LCPS has MERV 8 filters installed
districtwide. But MERV 13 — which is a better
filter — is now required by the NMPED.
LCPS ordered MERV 13 filters in mid-September,
when the new requirement was announced by NMPED.
But the delivery date has been pushed back, due
to high demand for the air filtration
systems across the country.
Jacquez explained that the manufacturing of
filters is being slowed by the shortage for the
filtering media that makes up the MERV 13.
“It's affected many districts who run typically
a (MERV 8) or a (MERV 9) like we do, so
everybody's asking for the same thing at the
same time,” Jacquez said. “At first, it was a …
two- to six-week (wait), and then they pushed it
off to eight. There's really no options … pretty
much you have to get in line, and as they get
produced, they will get out to folk
In the meantime, LCPS has been using individual
HEPA air filters, which are individual air
purifiers, and opening windows and doors to
improve air circulation.
The week of Oct. 19, LCPS brought a group of
eight special education students to Picacho
Middle School for in-person instruction to meet
their needs. But the school was shut down on
Oct. 22 after an employee in the school tested
positive for COVID-19.
Vista Middle is currently holding in-person
instruction for special education students as
the district slowly introduces small special
education classes back to in-person learning in
different schools.
Districtwide, Hatch Valley Public Schools has
had MERV 10 filters for three years, according
to Jimmy Martinez, administrative assistant for
HVPS's maintenance department.
Martinez said they looked into purchasing MERV
13 filters for the district, but quickly
realized the filters would not be compatible
with many of the systems in place.
He said their Heating, Ventilation and Air
Conditioning systems range from 5 to 15 years
old or more across the schools in HVPS.
After consulting with its vendor who manages
their HVAC systems, HVPS concluded that they
would not have the funds to replace all their
filters.
Martinez said that not only would that higher
price of the MERV 13 filters be hard to
accommodate, but these filters need to be
replaced more frequently — since they filter out
more particles and fill up more quickly.
Additionally, the filters run down the HVAC
systems, which could potentially require pricey
repairs.
"Quite frankly, we just don't have the funding
to do what Las Cruces Public Schools do,"
Martinez said. "We're really glad to hear that
the (MERV) 10's were okay, and we can continue
using those."
Martinez said HVPS recently made an order to
replace all their air filters, a routine process
that happens around once a quarter. He said
there have not been any shortages for MERV 10
filters.
Martinez said that the national shortage in MERV
13 filters was not the cause for the district
opting to continue using MERV 10 filters. After
talking with vendors, HVPS decided MERV 10
filters were the best option for the district.
HVPS Superintendent Michael Chavez said that the
district is not offering in-person instruction
at this time.
Before the recent spike in COVID-19 cases in Doña
Ana County, HVPS was offering ancillary
one-on-one instruction on a needs-basis,
according to Chavez. That instruction has
stopped, and Chavez said they will not be
offering face-to-face instruction again until
cases come down.
Gadsden Independent School District will
continue to use MERV 8 and MERV 9.
GISD spokesman Luis Villalobos stated that "not
all GISD systems can handle such a restrictive
filter as the MERV 13. This filter, although
more efficient in producing air quality, can
make systems work much harder to get air through
and, in turn, could (cause) wear and tear,
possibly lowering the life expectancy of
systems."
Villalobos said that GISD will be replacing the
air filters more frequently than normal to
ensure the air circulating in school buildings
is clean. GISD will not be holding any in-person
instruction for the remainder of the semester.
Villalobos also stated that, due to the
unavailability of MERV 13 filters because of the
recent spike in demand, GISD has not been able
to purchase them up to now.
Meat processor Foster Farms temporarily closed a
poultry processing plant for deep cleaning
following a coronavirus outbreak at the facility
in Fresno, California. In the past two weeks,
193 of the 1,400 employees at the plant tested
positive for COVID-19, reported the Fresno
Bee.
Meanwhile, Merced County officials reported a
COVID-19 outbreak at a Foster Farms plant in
Livingston, 70 miles northwest of Fresno in the
Central Valley. Seven workers at the Livingston
plant tested positive for COVID-19, said the
Bee.
Foster Farms said prevalence of COVID-19 at its
plant on Cherry Street “began ramping up in
early November concurrent with the acceleration
of cases throughout Fresno County,” said the
newspaper. The coronavirus rate at Foster Farms’
plant on Belgravia Avenue in Fresno remained
below 1%, according to the company. At least two
Foster Farms employees in Fresno have died of
coronavirus-related complications.
When the plant on Cherry Street reopens, workers
will be tested twice a week, said Foster Farms.
The Merced
Sun-Star said county
officials added Foster Farms to their list of
workplaces with COVID-19 outbreaks last
Wednesday.
“Foster Farms return to the outbreak list is
notable, as the Livingston plant previously
spent many weeks on the outbreak list,” said the
Sun-Star. “The outbreak resulted in 92 Foster
Farms employees testing positive for COVID-19,
nine of whom died. The workplace outbreak was
the worst in Merced County and one of the
deadliest in the state, according to County
Public Health officials.”
The United
Food and Commercial Workers union
said President-elect Joe Biden’s selection of
Xavier Becerra to serve as U.S. health secretary
“sends a clear message that this administration
is ready to fight for our country’s frontline
workers. Protecting our country’s essential
workers is crucial to taking control of this
pandemic and rebuilding the economy.” The UFCW
represents 1.3 million food and retail workers
At least 339 workers at meat plants, food
processing plants, and farms have died of
COVID-19 and nearly 75,000 co-workers have had
confirmed cases of COVID-19, according to data
collected by FERN as
of Monday at midday.
An Illinois-based meat manufacturer is suing the
state of New Mexico after health officials there
ordered a processing plant to close for two
weeks because of a coronavirus outbreak.
In a complaint filed in U.S. District Court,
Stampede Meat said it will lose millions of
pounds of meat at a plant in Sunland Park, just
across the state line from El Paso, Texas, and
it asked a judge to throw out the order.
In court documents filed Friday, the company
outlined several measures it had taken to halt
the virus's spread, citing President Donald
Trump's executive order April
28 invoking the Defense Production Act.
The order required meat processing plants to
remain open during the pandemic.
In a letter to the company on Nov.
3,
a New Mexico health official cited six positive
coronavirus tests from Oct. 23 to Oct. 27 and
ordered the plant to be closed for two weeks.
The New Mexico Heath Department referred
questions about the suit to a spokeswoman for
the state's Environment Department. The
spokeswoman, Maddy Hayden, declined to discuss
the suit, but she said courts have repeatedly
upheld the state's authority to protect the
public's health and safety.
Stampede Meat employs more than 500 workers at
its Sunland Park plant. Hayden said more than
100 workers there have tested positive since the
pandemic began.
Stampede did not immediately respond to a
request for a comment.
The United States is having its highest
single-day tallies of coronavirus
infections. More than 120,000 people tested
positive for the virus Thursday, according to an
NBC News tally.
The Midwest and the Southwest have been hit
hard. In New Mexico, the number of cases
steadily rose over the last two weeks, jumping
from just over 700 on Oct. 8 to 1,210 on Sunday,
according to the Johns Hopkins University
Coronavirus Resource Center.
Nearby El Paso has also had a surge in
infections, with the number of cases nearly
doubling in the last month, according to Johns
Hopkins. So many people are
dying in the county that six mobile morgues have
been set up, with four more on the way,
officials said Monday.
JBS USA voluntarily removed 202 workers,
including those who are 60 and older, from its
Greeley, Colorado, beef facility as part of its
vulnerable population policy, a company
spokesperson said in an email. The workers are
getting full pay and benefits.
The plant is one of the largest in the country
with about 3,500 workers. The spokesman said
there have been 32 cases among its Greeley plant
workforce in the most
recent wave of community outbreak in
Weld County, where the plant is located. In
recent weeks, the company said, Weld County has
had more than 4,450 cases and Colorado has had
more than 69,120 cases.
Across all of JBS's U.S. facilities, the
spokesperson said the company has removed more
than 5,000 people — roughly 8% of its workforce
— with pay and benefits during the most recent
wave of infections spreading across the country.
To accommodate for staff reduction, JBS said it
may simplify the mix of products in a plant.
As the meat industry continues to fight off
coronavirus surges in communities across the
country, JBS is ramping up its defensive
strategy to protect the more at-risk members of
its workforce.
Early in the pandemic, meat plants became hot
spots for outbreaks and many criticized the
industry for responding too slowly. During the
course of the pandemic, many meatpackers —
including JBS, Tyson and Smithfield — have
implemented precautions in plants, including
temperature checks, staggered start times,
required use of masks, physical barriers, UV
germicidal air sanitation and plasma bipolar
ionization technologies. But even with
precautions, coronavirus has continued to
spread.
The original outbreak at the Greeley plant was
among the worst in the industry, with six deaths
and more than 290 cases as of October, according
to the Greeley Tribune. In September, the
Occupational Safety and Health Administration
cited the plant with a proposed $15,615 fine for
"failing to protect employees" from the
coronavirus.
JBS said it first removed vulnerable workers at
the Greeley plant in late March. Some returned
in August as case numbers subsided in the
community. Many beef, poultry and pork plants
across the country temporarily
closed to
stop the spread of the virus early on in the
pandemic. The
Greeley plant temporarily
shuttered in April after urging from
the local union.
Since March, the
largest meat companies in
the country have spent hundreds of millions on
COVID-19 precautions and tens of thousands of
workers have been infected. JBS USA has invested
more than $415 million into COVID-19
precautions, support and bonuses. Executives
have expressed more confidence since precautions
have been in place, even as the virus has surged
across the country.
"I’m pretty confident we are not going to have
the size of the disruption we saw in April and
May," JBS CEO
Andre Nogueira said at
The Wall Street Journal’s Global Food Forum in
October.
As cases surged around Colorado, JBS said it
partnered with the state to offer testing to its
workers at a location near the Greeley plant.
Many say testing has helped
to slow the
spread of the virus in processing plants.
"We are optimistic that this, coupled with our
weekly surveillance testing and contact tracing
protocols, has contributed to the low number of
positive cases at our facility despite the high
rate of spread in the surrounding community,"
the spokesman said.
Last month, JBS
USA also announced it would cover 100% of
employee costs associated with COVID-19
diagnosis and treatment. That move came in
addition to free COVID-19 testing, which has
been available for the company’s workers since
March. To date, JBS has conducted more than
20,000 random surveillance tests of asymptomatic
team members, the company said.
Amid the continued spread of the virus, the food
industry is pushing
for workers to be prioritized for
vaccinations. Last week, the North American Meat
Institute urged
officials to
place meat and poultry workers at the front of
the line to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. JBS
said the company is actively working with state
and local health departments to coordinate
vaccination of its workforce as soon as it
becomes available.
"The meat and poultry industry was among the
first sectors to be challenged with the
pandemic, and since March the industry has
implemented effective programs and controls to
stop the spread of COVID," NAMI CEO Julie Anna
Potts said in an emailed statement. "Our efforts
are working, but access to vaccines remains the
most critical tool to protect this critical
infrastructure workforce."
Meat Processors Should Consider the Cleanrooms
International FFU Rather Than Partitions
This new fan filter unit from Cleanrooms
International is just what meat processors
should be installing instead of partitions.
Features of the SAM44 Fan Filter Units
include:
Final filter is protected with a white epoxy
diamond pattern grille and are tested according
to accepted procedures as described by the
Institute of Environmental Sciences (IEST)
and/or ISO standards.
Optional Features
Your air, your style, and you. Breathe in
healthy and clean air with Purar, where the
useful is separated from the harmful particles
by providing all with comfortable, highly
functional, and appealing face masks, while
never compromising on personal style.
Having experienced Shanghai China’s long season
of air pollution first hand, Purar’s co-founder,
Jasmine/Xiaohua Meng, found that wearing a mask
was the only way to protect yourself. As a daily
mask user, she experienced the discomfort of
wearing standard surgical facemasks, which make
breathing harder from increased humidity, fogs
up glasses, and can irritate the wearer.
With the question in mind of finding a highly
protective, comfortable, and stylish
alternative, Jasmine delivered the pitch to her
employer, Mann+Hummel, which makes most of its
billions annually from industrial air filter
manufacturing; conventional car filters, to be
specific. Headquartered near Stuttgart, Germany,
Mann+Hummel has been looking for alternative
directions to pivot into, given that the
conventional car market is changing
dramatically. So a few years ago, Mann+Hummel
launched a startup contest called InCube, the
winning idea gets you six months at a startup
incubator, Plug and Play Tech Center, in
California.
Purar emerged as a winning product for the 2019
contest and was formally launched in the Plug
and Play’s Acceleration program in Silicon
Valley, with a global team of developers working
to create a mask that not only works well, but
also feels like a seamless part of our wearers.
Derived from the words “Pure Air”, the facemasks
are engineered by the filtration experts at
Mann+Hummel to achieve the KN95’s filtration
level, giving it the ability to filter more than
95% of the 0.3 micron particles. Besides being
certified for KN95 standards, Purar facemasks
has also passed the leakage test according to
GB2626-2019.
In terms of the design, the reusable facemask
includes a filter that can be replaced and a
sustainable outer shell which is washable. The
washable shell is crafted with an ergonomic
design that is configured carefully with
polygons for fitting comfortably according to
your face shape. An additional feature of the
mask is the neck grip that does not hurt your
ears as much as ear-looped mask. This neck grip
provides more convenience for wearers who use
wire or wireless audio device such as headphone
or AirPods or even female wearers who
accessorize their ears with large chunky
earrings. For those who wear glasses, the mask
comes with a pre-formed nose support that helps
prevent glass-fogging issues.
Each mask is available in 2 sizes (size S and L)
and includes 6 stylish colors: Blue, Black,
Burgundy, Grey, Pink and Mauve. A box of mask
retails at USD49 and comprises of a mask shell,
2 replaceable filters (Protect Plus and Lite
Comfort) and a travel pouch. Protect Plus filter
is tested and certified for standard that
similar to American N95 (GB2626-2019,
certification KN95) to provide full protection.
Whilst Lite Comfort filter provides higher air
permeability than Protect Plus to provide more
comfort and breathability.
Purar mask is available in 6 stylish colors:
Blue, Black, Burgundy, Grey, Pink and Mauve
Purar does not stop at just offering a highly
fashionable facemask to end-consumers, it goes
beyond this by also offering customizable mask
for B2B corporate needs.
After all, Purar’s mission is to provide
people with a comfortable and fashionable
accessory by leveraging the creativity of young
designers to enable them to breathe cleaner air.
Customizable facemask for corporate needs
M+H Air Purifier Used at Schools
There are systems and areas within buildings
where the upgrade of filtration is simply not
practical. One possible solution is a portable
air cleaner like the TRI-KLEEN 500UV that
utilizes HEPA filtration and UV lights. These
units allow for increased filtration as well as
more air changes to provide a cleaner space.
Place the device as close as possible to the
occupants location, so they breathe the actual
filtered air. The larger the distance to the
unit, the higher the chance to inhale swirling
contaminants which could include viruses. In
addition the TRI-KLEEN 500UV has an optional
exhaust grille that will allow for a flex duct
to be attached and allow for the air to be
exhausted to create a negative pressure in a
space to allow for containment in a specific
space.
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