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Danish abattoir closed over coronavirus cluster

Meat giant Danish Crown announced on Saturday it had closed a large slaughterhouse in Denmark after nearly 150 employees tested positive for the coronavirus.

Published: 9 August 2020 11:12 CEST

Danish abattoir closed over coronavirus cluster

Danish Crown slaughterhouse in Ringsted. Photo: Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau Scanpix

The abattoir in Ringsted, about 50 kilometres (30 miles) from Copenhagen, employs nearly 900 people and slaughters tens of thousands of pigs every week.

Danish Crown said 120 employees tested positive for the virus in a first round of tests of 600 employees present.

It then retested all the negative cases and detected 22 additional infections.

“For this reason, we are closing the abattoir for at least a week to try to break the chain of transmission among employees on site,” Danish Crown said in a statement.

All the employees must quarantine, said the company, one of Denmark's biggest exporters and the biggest pork product producer in Europe.

Several European slaughterhouses have been hit with the coronavirus in recent months, particularly in Germany.

The coronavirus cluster at Ringsted is the main active one in Denmark, where the number of cases has increased sharply in recent days.

On Friday, 169 confirmed cases of the coronavirus were recorded in Denmark, the highest figure for a single day since 25 April. This is according to figures sent by health authorities to the parliamentary parties, DR says. 79 of the new infected are in Aarhus, where the infection seems to have taken hold.

From Thursday to Friday, 145 people were found to be infected in Denmark and 68 in Aarhus.

Due to increasing infection rates in recent weeks, there are doubts about the next phase of the reopening of Denmark.

From a very low number of new infections at the beginning of the summer holidays, the number of infections has been steadily increasing since week 29.

READ ALSO: Why coronavirus spike in Aarhus was not caused by a single event

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IN NUMBERS: Has the Omicron Covid-19 wave peaked in Denmark?

Graffiti in the Copenhagen hippy enclave of Christiania complaining of Omicron's impact on Christmas. Photo: Philip Davali/Scanpix

How many cases, hospitalisations and deaths are there in Denmark?

Denmark registered 12,588 new cases in the 24 hours leading up to 2pm on Saturday, down from the 18,261 registered on in the day leading up to Friday at 2pm, which was itself a decline from the record 28,283 cases recorded on Wednesday.

The cases were identified by a total of 174,517 PCR tests, bringing the positive percentage to 7.21 percent, down from the sky high rates of close to 12 percent seen in the first few days of January.

The number of cases over the past seven days is lower than the week before in almost every municipality in Denmark, with only Vallensbæk, Aarhus, Holseterbro, Skanderborg, Hjørring, Vordingborg, Ringkøbing, Kolding, Assens, Horsens, Thisted, and Langeland reporting rises.

Hospitalisations have also started to fall, with some 730 patients being treated for Covid-10 on Saturday, down from 755 on Friday. On Tuesday, 794 were being treated for Covid-19 in Danish hospitals, the highest number since the peak of the 2020-21 winter wave.

The only marker which has not yet started to fall is the number of deaths, which tends to trail infections and hospitalisations.

In the 24 hours leading up to 2pm on Saturday, Denmark registered 28 deaths with Covid-19, the highest daily number recorded since 20 January 2021, when 29 people died with Covid-19 (although Denmark’s deadliest day was the 19 January 2021, when 39 people died).

How does Denmark compare to other countries in Europe?

Over the last seven days, Denmark has had the highest Covid-19 case rate of any country in Europe bar Ireland. The number of new infections in the country has climbed steadily since the start of December, apart from a brief fall over Christmas.

So does this mean the omicron wave has peaked?

Maybe, although experts are not sure.

“Of course, you can hope for that, but I’m not sure that is the case,” said Christian Wejse, head of the Department for Infectious Diseases at Aarhus University Hospital. “I think it is too early to conclude that the epidemic has peaked.”

He said that patients with the Omicron variant were being discharged more rapidly on average than had been the case with those who had the more dangerous Delta variant.

“Many admissions are relatively short-lived, thankfully. This is because many do not become that il, and are largely hospitalized because they are suffering with something else. And if they are stable and do not need oxygen, then they are quickly discharged again.”

Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said during a visit to an event held by the Social Liberal party that the latest numbers made her even more optimistic about the coming month.

“We have lower infection numbers and the number of hospitalisations is also plateauing,” she said. “I think we’re going to get through this winter pretty well, even if it will be a difficult time for a lot of people, and we are beginning to see the spring ahead of us, so I’m actually very optimistic.”

She said that she had been encouraged by the fact that Omicron was a “visibly less dangerous variant if it is not allowed to explode.”

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