Due “in part to a discrepancy in one site’s data,” the number of active COVID-19 cases among the National Nuclear Security Administration’s network of facilities rose to 33 this week from 23 a week ago, an agency spokesperson said Friday.
That brings the total number of cases at the nuclear weapons agency to 99, since confirmation in January that the viral disease that broke out in Wuhan, China, last year, hit the U.S. At deadline Friday, 66 people at National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) sites had recovered from their bouts with COVID-19.
“We are not tracking any COVID-19 fatalities across NNSA,” the agency spokesperson said by email.
The Department of Energy nuclear-weapon branch has largely not required tests for COVID-19 across the complex, even as it has kept its major production sites working all shifts in an attempt to blunt the effect of the pandemic on ongoing nuclear weapons and infrastructure modernization.
The Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico is an exception. The world’s first nuclear-weapon site has a mandatory random testing program for employees still reporting for work within the fence. As of Friday it had performed more than 850 random tests — none of which returned a positive result, a lab spokesperson said.
The Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico and California also has the capacity to test employees for COVID-19, but at least as of last month did not require testing for on-site workers. A Sandia spokesperson did not reply to a request for comment this week.
Meanwhile, the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, plans to bring some more people on-site starting June 8. For now, the site remains in mission-critical operations, meaning only those needed for the most essential weapons missions are on-site.
Also taking the first step on the slow road back to normal operations on June 8 will be DOE headquarters in Washington.
With Virginia and Maryland easing stay-at-home restrictions, DOE headquarters buildings in the capital region — where nearly 1,000 NNSA employees work — are set to partially reopen, Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette said this week.
The initial reopening of the Forrestal Building in Washington and the Germantown facility in nearby Maryland will apply only to federal employees doing mission-critical work, plus a few support services contractors, according to reopening guidelines published in May. Those who need to work in DOE classified spaces and those who cannot easily telework will be the first to return during Phase 1 of the four-part process.
Large communal areas such as cafeterias and gyms will stay closed for now, and any federal employee who self-identifies as particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 will not have to come back to work right away, according to the reopening guidelines. Likewise, employees caring for people who are especially vulnerable to the disease will not have to return immediately.
Roughly, there are a combined 7,000 federal employees and contractors working at Forrestal and Germantown, a DOE spokesperson said this week. Only about 250 will return starting June 8, the spokesperson said.
Returning employees will be asked not to enter DOE headquarters buildings if: they have had had flu-like symptoms, including a temperature over 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit, in the last 10 days; they have been in contact with someone who had COVID-19 in the last 14 days; or they have been told to self-quarantine in the last 14 days.
Those returning to work at headquarters are encouraged, but not required, to wear face coverings, the reopening guidelines say.
The Energy Department has a four-phase reopening plan for its headquarters buildings in the Washington region. The two buildings are in Phase 0 now, with Phase 3 signifying a return to essentially pre-COVID-19 operations. Big common areas likely will not reopen until the final phase.
The notional timeline for moving to Phase 2, when COVID-19-vulnerable employees may volunteer to return to work, is two weeks from the start of Phase 1, according to the reopening guidelines.
Last week, Brouillette disclosed that three more employees working at DOE headquarters were confirmed to have COVID-19. That brings the total number of headquarters cases to at least 16, one of which was fatal.
Meanwhile, the NNSA is still waiting to receive the nearly quarter-million personal respirators it ordered from a small business in Georgia, due to “order and shipping backlogs,” an agency spokesperson said.
This week, the agency told Nuclear Security & Deterrence Montor that American Dream Builders LLC would get about another month, until June 30, to deliver the KN-95-rated respirators the company wants to source from a manufacturer in China.
KN-95 is a Chinese standard that is roughly equivalent to the U.S. N95 standard. Properly fitted, personal respirators that meet these standards can protect wearers from COVID-19. American Dream Builders has a $415,000 fixed-price contract to deliver the facewear. The NNSA ordered 39,000 respirators for federal employees, plus 186,000 for contractors.
COVID-19 Cases in NNSA Host Regions
Following is Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor’s weekly digest of confirmed COVID-19 cases, including fatal cases, in the host cities and counties of NNSA nuclear weapons sites.
The figures below are the cumulative cases recorded since the first confirmed U.S. instance of COVID-19 in January.
Data come from a tracker maintained by Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and from select states, counties, and cities, where noted. The Monitor tracks weekly changes, using the latest data available at deadline, which is sometimes current as of the Thursday before publication.
Testing figures report the number of aggregate tests, not the number of people tested.
Kansas City, Mo. – Kansas City National Security Campus
The city so far has a total of 1,437 total confirmed cases and 27 deaths, up from 962 confirmed cases and 22 deaths last week.
Statewide, the instances of new cases increased this week from the prior week, with Missouri registering more than 14,400 confirmed cases and 595 total deaths, up from 13,000 confirmed cases and 595 deaths a week ago. That is 200 more new cases this week than last.
Two weeks ago, Missouri changed the way it reports COVID-19 tests performed in the state and now includes only tests that look for active cases. Previously, the state included in its totals tests that check to see whether a healthy person had previously had COVID-19, according to the state Department of Health and Senior Services.
About 218,600 tests had been performed statewide, at deadline Friday, from 170,000 a week ago. The week before that, when Missouri was still lumping both types of tests together, it reported nearly 173,000 tests.
Missouri was among the first states to reopen businesses that shuttered for months to slow the spread of COVID-19.
New Mexico – NNSA Albuquerque, Albuquerque; Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque; Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos
New Mexico had more than 8,300 confirmed total cases and 383 deaths at deadline, up sharply from 7,300 cases and 335 total deaths a week ago. There were 200 more new cases confirmed in the state this week than last week.
Bernalillo County, near Albuquerque and Sandia, had about 1,500 confirmed positive cases and 73 deaths at deadline, up from about 1,400 cases and 63 deaths last week. More than 212,996 tests had been performed in New Mexico, rising from about 179,543 a week ago and 147,000 the week before that, according to the state and the Johns Hopkins tracker.
Los Alamos County held steady week over week at six total confirmed cases and no deaths, maintaining that level of confirmed infections for the seventh consecutive week.
Cases in the counties surrounding Los Alamos rose again this week, with a rate of increase about the same as last week’s. Sandoval County had 578 confirmed cases and 27 deaths at deadline, up from 556 confirmed cases and 24 deaths a week ago. Sandoval has a worse outbreak than any other county near Los Alamos.
Taos County had 31 confirmed cases and no deaths this week, up from 24 cases and no deaths last week. Rio Arriba had 52 cases and one death, up from 41 cases and still one death last week. Santa Fe, N.M., south of Los Alamos, had 150 confirmed total cases, up from 138 confirmed a week ago. Santa Fe’s fatal cases held steady at three for a second consecutive week. The county recorded its first COVID-19 fatalities in May.
Oak Ridge, Tenn., Anderson County – Y-12 National Security Complex
There were at deadline 42 confirmed cases and two deaths in Anderson County, Tenn., which includes the Y-12 National Security Complex. That is up from 39 confirmed cases a week ago, with one new death.
In May, COVID-19 infections in Tennessee rose by about 1,000 a week every week, then jumped even more sharply in the first week of June, when the state received reports of nearly 3,700 new confirmed cases. There were almost 1,200 more new cases confirmed this week than last week.
There were at deadline almost 25,200 confirmed total cases and 401 total deaths statewide, up from 21,500 cases and 356 deaths a week ago. There had been about 476,138 tests performed in Tennessee at deadline, up from 415,989 last week and 360,500 the week before, according to the state and the Johns Hopkins tracker.
Livermore, Calif., Alameda County – Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (including Sandia, Calif.)
In Alameda County, near the Livermore lab, there were as of this week more than 3,600 confirmed cases and 97 total deaths at deadline, up from 3,100 confirmed cases and 94 deaths a week ago. The number of new cases this week was flat this week compared with last week, at 500.
For a month, the county has had more confirmed cases and deaths than nearby San Francisco, which had nearly 2,650 confirmed cases and 43 total deaths, up from 2,400 confirmed cases and 37 deaths a week ago.
California, the largest and most populous state in the union, had almost 123,000 confirmed cases and 4,454 total deaths at deadline, compared with about 103,000 confirmed cases and 4,000 total deaths a week ago. There were about 5,500 more new confirmed cases in California this week, compared with last rate’s new-case rate. There had been nearly 2.1 million total tests performed in California, at deadline, up from about 1.8 million last week and 1.4 million the week before that.
Aiken, S.C., Aiken County – Savannah River Site
Aiken had about 208 confirmed cases at deadline Friday, with seven deaths. That’s up from about 189 cases a week ago. There were no new fatal cases in Aiken this week.
The Savannah River Site itself had confirmed 23 total cases of COVID-19 at deadline Friday, up from 22. Confirmed infections on sit surged from 15 a week ago. At deadline Friday, however, 16 site personnel who previously tested positive had recovered.
South Carolina overall had more than 12,400 confirmed cases and 470 total confirmed deaths this week, up from about 10,800 confirmed cases and 470 deaths last week. There were 100 more new cases confirmed in the state this week, compared with last week new-case count. There had been about 230,851 tests performed in South Carolina as of deadline, up from about 182,200 a week ago and 138,000 tests the week before that.
Amarillo, Texas, including Potter and Randall counties – Pantex Plant
The two host counties of Pantex still have more cumulative cases and more new cases week-to-week than the host region of any other NNSA production site.
Potter County had almost 300 new cases this week. That’s as high as many larger counties and cities, and nearly 200 more new cases this week than last week. Still, the surge has cooled in the region, where two weeks ago, Potter County reported 892 new cases in the course of seven days, according to the Amarillo Public Health Department. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed up in the Texas Panhandle last month to conduct more COVID-19 tests. There are meat packing plans and a prison in the area, plus the always-open Pantex.
The two Amarillo-area counties had a combined total of 3,228 cases and 38 deaths at deadline: 2,504 cases and 32 deaths in Potter; 724 cases and six deaths in Randall, according to the Amarillo Public Health Department.
Last week at this time, the counties had a combined 2,934 cases and 34 deaths: 2,276 cases and 28 deaths for Potter, and 658 cases and still six deaths in Randall.
In the two counties, there have been a combined 15,203 tests performed, rising from 13,239 last week and from 11,342 the week before that, according to the Amarillo health department. Cases skyrocketed in early May, after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention came to town and, in the span of a week, nearly doubled the number of tests performed in the counties.
In total, the Lone Star State had more than 70,700 total confirmed cases and 1,783 total deaths, up from 60,400 cases and 1,611 total deaths last week. The number of new cases confirmed this week was around 3,000 higher than the number of new cases confirmed last week. There had been more than 1 million tests done in Texas as of Friday, up from 873,000 last week, and 770,000 the week before that, according to the state and the Hopkins tracker.
Nevada – Nevada National Security Site
There were 64 confirmed cases in Nye County, Nev., near the northwestern perimeter of the former Nevada Test Site, up two from 61 a week ago. Nye County has had two fatal cases of COVID-19 at deadline, up from one a week ago.
In Las Vegas and surrounding Clark County, which have most of the state’s cases and deaths, there were more than 5,700 cases and 376 deaths, up from 7,056 cases and 361 total deaths last week.
Statewide, Nevada had more than 9,100 cases and 430 deaths, up from 8,200 cases and 406 total deaths a week ago. The weekly increase in confirmed infections was higher by 100 than than the week before. There had been more than 161,423 tests performed in Nevada, as of deadline, up from about 130,000 a week ago and 125,000 tests a week before that, according to the state and the Johns Hopkins tracker.
Nationwide
There were at deadline 108,278 confirmed fatal cases of COVID-19 domestically, up about 6,600 from some 101,622 confirmed deaths last week, according to the Hopkins tracker.
The increase in fatal cases this week was a little higher than last week, when the Hopkins tracker showed around 6,000 new virus fatalities. However, COVID-19 deaths are down thousands, compared with the 10,000 new fatalities recorded two weeks ago. The U.S. has long been, and remains, the most infected nation on Earth, with more than 1.8 million confirmed cases, which is around 100,000 more than a week ago.
Since confirmation that the outbreak had hit the U.S., nearly people 485,000 domestically had recovered from their bouts with COVID-19, making for about 85,000 recoveries week-to-week, at deadline. There had been some 18 million tests performed in the U.S., up from 15.5 million a week ago, and up from 13 million the week before that.
