Red Deer meat processing plant sends 13 staff home after worker infected with COVID-19

Olymel's Red Deer processing plant is shown.

EDMONTON — A Red Deer meat-processing plant says it has sent 13 employees home and urged them to get swabbed for COVID-19 after a worker there tested positive for the disease.

The infected Olymel employee was sent home after showing symptoms of COVID-19 on Aug. 11, a company spokesman told CTV News Edmonton.

That person was tested and found out two days later they were positive for the disease.

As a result, 13 Olymel workers were sent home — six on Friday and after a review, seven more on Monday — and told to get tested.

The plant remains operational and will be visited by Occupational Health and Safety representatives, as well as public health officials, on Tuesday.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency and Alberta Health Services have been notified, Olymel said.

The company said there are "extensive precautions" in place to ensure food safety and physical distancing, and that 13 workers were only sent home as a precaution, not because they were showing symptoms.