HCMC – Local meat processor Vissan has announced to continue providing fresh food to residents in HCMC after proposed suspending its production activities as it detected 43 Covid-19 cases at the workplace on July 23.
In a press release, the company stated that other business activities will be resumed after its employees in areas under lockdown return to work, the local media reported.
The company has applied the stay-at-work mode since June 28, regularly conducted tests for its staff and vaccinated them against Covid-19.
However, by July 17, the company detected four Covid-19 cases and sent them to centralized quarantine centers. As of July 23, the company had 43 more Covid-19 cases, mainly in the purchase and supply units.
With the support of the government and the medical center of Binh Thanh District, Vissan has moved all direct contacts of Covid-19 cases to centralized quarantine centers.
The company has traced 357 direct contacts and 351 indirect contacts of these 43 cases.
In a document sent to the HCMC Department of Health, the municipal Center for Disease Control and the relevant agencies earlier, Vissan proposed two plans after detecting Covid-19 cases.
In the first plan, it will send all Covid-19 cases to centralized quarantine facilities, while the remainder will undergo tests. If they test negative for the coronavirus, they will be assigned to separate production lines and will undergo Covid-19 tests every three days.
In the second plan, direct contacts of Covid-19 cases will be sent to their residences if they test negative for Covid-19, while indirect contacts with Covid-19 cases will be quarantined in line with the regulations. Therefore, the company proposed suspending its production until these employees return to work.
In previous years, HCMC consumed some 10,000 pigs per day, including 1,000 slaughtered at Vissan’s plants. Since 2020, due to the pandemic, Vissan’s slaughtering capacity fell to 600-700 pigs a day.
In the current pandemic outbreak, Vissan has increased its daily slaughtering capacity to 1,000-1,500 pigs, accounting for 26.55%-28.6% of HCMC’s demand for pork.
According to the HCMC Department of Industry and Trade, if Vissan’s production is suspended, the prices and volume of meat products in the market will not be affected.
Deputy Director of the department Nguyen Nguyen Phuong said during the stay-at home mandate, the demand for pork fell from 10,000 to 5,000-6,000 pigs per day. In addition, there are many other pork suppliers, such as Sagri, CP, Masan, CJ and Anh Hoang Thy.
