The first death associated with the devastating #COVID19 outbreak at the #Cargill meat-packing plant in High River, #Alberta has been announced. As of April 20, 484 cases associated with the plant have been reported, with more to come.
cbc.ca/news/canada/ca…
On April 17, 358 total cases were reported, with 200 being employees and contractors of the plant and 158 involving others in households connected to Cargill. Today, these numbers were updated to 484 total cases, with 360 being workers and 124 being close contacts of workers.
I got to wondering: what might this outbreak look like as a transmission network? This is what I came up with. Case among workers (primary cases) are red. Cases among close contacts of workers (secondary cases) are blue. These are simulated data—I have no special access to info.
Since the primary cases greatly outnumber the secondary cases at the moment, most of the primary cases are clustered close to the dot in the centre (representing the plant). These primary cases are not associated with any secondary cases.
Primary cases positioned further from the centre have more secondary cases: 1, 2, 3, or even 4. Most of these would probably represent spread to members of the same household. Why so many 0s? Many cases are yet to be identified, and many may be asymptomatic.
The original article noted some households had “multiple exposures, including in long-term care facilities with outbreaks of COVID-19”.
cbc.ca/news/canada/ca…
So some cases associated with Cargill workers may have come from long-term care. Alternately, some of the Cargill cases may have inadvertently spread it to long-term care through close household contacts working in that setting.
What does this all mean? At this point, not much. It’s just a pretty picture. But hopefully it can help to illustrate the devastating consequences of working conditions that have not been adapted to the realities of #PhysicalDistancing during #COVID19.
As I tweeted a few days ago, here in #Canada we have shockingly little data available on race and health, as well as other social determinants of health. This harms our ability to understand the #COVID19 outbreak in #Canada, as well as other diseases.
If you’re interested in how this simulation and visualization was created, I’ve posted the R code on GitHub.👇
github.com/jeanpaulrsoucy…
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