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Note: This story has been updated to provide more information about the county’s decision to withhold business identities.
GREEN BAY – Health officials are investigating dozens of Brown County workplaces and long-term care facilities where multiple employees have tested positive for COVID-19 infections, and in some cases where people have died.
Investigations are under way at 54 workplaces, 20 long-term care facilities and 19 other sites within the county, figures from the state Department of Health Services show.
The 93 total investigations are second only to Milwaukee County among Wisconsin’s 72 counties, and the 54 “non-healthcare” workplaces under review are the most in the state. The number shot up from 45 businesses to 54 between Tuesday and Wednesday, according to the state.
Two much larger counties, Milwaukee and Dane, have 38 and 10 non-health care businesses under investigation, respectively.
State guidelines say an investigation must happen if a business is linked to as few as two confirmed COVID-19 cases, but some of the sites in Brown County are linked to much higher numbers. A report released by the county said those sites include:
» A long-term care facility with links to at least five deaths.
» A meat-processing facility tied to at least four fatalities.
» A homeless shelter where there have been at least 14 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including three among employees.
» Another long-term care facility linked to two deaths among at least nine confirmed cases.
» Two restaurants and a hotel or motel.
» A group-housing site, food-production facilities and multiple other workplaces, each of which had at least six people test positive for COVID-19.
In all, health officials suspect those workplaces have ties to as many as 250 confirmed cases of COVID-19 — 10% of the county’s 2,507 people infected with the virus during the pandemic through Wednesday.
The records don’t disclose which facilities are being investigated, or where in the county they’re located.
The county refused to release the names of the businesses — even those linked to deaths — saying investigations might show no causal link between the workplace and the illness. In a six-page report Brown County released after a Green Bay Press-Gazette open-records law request, anything that might reveal a business’ name or location was blacked out.
“Knowing that a shelter had an outbreak, or that a gas station had 2 cases, will not keep you safe just by avoiding those,” County Health and Human Services Director Erik Pritzl wrote in an emailed statement. “It’s still a people transmission problem.”
Deputy County Executive Jeff Flynt acknowledged “there is currently no law prohibiting disclosure of specific name of businesses or facilities under public health investigations related to COVID-19,” but the county later decided it’s better for the public to keep those identities secret than to release them.
‘We need to be asking more questions’
The number of investigations, and the number of COVID-19 cases to which they could be connected, appeared to stun county Board of Health Chairman Richard Schadewald. He said he first learned of the number of investigations in a call from a reporter.
“The first time I heard about this is when you asked me, just now,” he told a reporter recently. “The Board of Health is learning we need to be asking more questions. A lot of people are asking questions, and they should be.”
Schadewald also said he learned about an April spike in COVID-19 cases in the county not from the health department, but by reading his newspaper.
Some of the local workplaces that have prompted investigations related to COVID-19 were previously identified via other means.
State health officials said earlier this spring that an investigation was under way at Country Villa Assisted Living in Pulaski, where officials say the virus has killed 10 residents.
The county health department in April had publicly linked COVID-19 cases to three local meatpackers: JBS Packerland and American Foods Group in Green Bay, and Salm Partners, a Denmark sausage-maker.
Records released to the Press-Gazette did not name those businesses, however.
One of the meatpacking plants — the county won’t say which — is linked to four fatalities. The report said no deaths are connected to the other two plants.
In response to a separate Press-Gazette request, the county released medical examiner reports that indicated a 56-year-old Green Bay woman and her daughter died with COVID-19 and were closely related to employees of JBS and Salm.
RELATED: Brown County COVID-19 cases exceed 500, many from meatpackers
RELATED: State says 10 residents at Pulaski assisted living facility died with COVID-19
Green Bay’s St. John the Evangelist homeless shelter, while not identified in records released to the Press-Gazette, is the facility health officials link to 14 cases of the virus, including those of three staff members who were quarantined and have recovered, said Executive Director Alexia Wood. She believes the number of cases is slightly smaller.
After the shelter reported its first COVID case on about March 25, as many as 38 people associated with the shelter spent time in one of the facilities the county leased for isolation and quarantine purposes; most of those were shelter workers, health officials said. The county leased space in a college dormitory and a suites-style hotel.
The report provided by the county links the homeless shelter to three COVID-19 deaths. But while the deaths occurred after the pandemic began, Wood said, those people died because of a chronic medical condition, a suicide and a homicide.
County won’t say zip, nor ZIP codes
The county has refused several requests from the Press-Gazette to identify any of the businesses, or say where any are located, and would not disclose the community, or even the ZIP code in which any are located. Written requests to identify the businesses under investigation were rejected by officials in Brown County’s Health and Human Services and Law departments, and by its deputy county executive.
“The fact that an individual has tested positive for COVID-19 does not automatically cause Public Health to identify where that individual works, or where that individual has shopped, recreated or eaten at, as those entities may have nothing to do with the individual testing positive,” Corporation Counsel David Hemery wrote in denying one request. “… A determination whether to reveal the name of the facility/entity is made on a case-by-case basis after taking facts found during the investigation and various other factors into consideration.”
Hemery also wrote that the county is worried a business that had “done everything right” to be safe and sanitary could end up shutting down and laying off workers because its identity was released, and that other employers with sick workers or customers would then refuse to cooperate with public health officials. He said it’s better for the local economy to not name the 54 businesses.
Neither Hemery nor other county officials indicated when they will release a list of businesses with practices that contributed to COVID-19 outbreaks.
Any business with multiple confirmed cases must undergo a facility-wide public health investigation, according to the state Department of Health Services. This is the fourth consecutive week that Brown County has led the state’s 72 counties in the number of non-health care workplaces under investigation.
Flynt said an inspection can take 45 minutes to three hours, depending on what needs to be addressed.
What took so long?
The Press-Gazette first asked Brown County for information about the businesses on May 27, and followed up with written questions on May 29 after a health official said he was told he was prohibited from answering further questions.
The newspaper then filed a request under Wisconsin’s Open Records Law after the county refused to disclose specific information about the businesses involved, the communities in which they’re located and the number of cases connected to each. The county provided a six-page list on June 11 but blacked out anything that might identify a business, or indicate it was located in a specific community.
Other cases
Other Brown County workplaces linked to at least four confirmed COVID-19 cases:
» A long-term care facility tied to nine cases, including two deaths.
» A group housing/affordable housing site with nine cases, including one death.
» A warehouse and distribution facility that had eight cases and no deaths.
» An undefined “outdoor workspace” with six cases and no deaths.
» A long-term care facility (non-nursing home) that had four cases, including one death.
» A long-term care facility with four cases (including two employees) and no deaths.
» A manufacturing facility with four cases and no deaths.
RELATED: Green Bay mom, daughter among 32 Brown County deaths in new COVID-19 records
Contact Doug Schneider at (920) 431-8333, or DSchneid@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @PGDougSchneider
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