Cass County leaders respond to temporary shut down of Tyson plant

Two-thirds of the COVID-19 cases in Cass County are connected to the Tyson pork processing plant that closed on Wednesday.

Now, local and state officials say every employee of the plant will be tested for exposure.

Of employees are seen walking out of tyson with bags full of items from their lockers.

This comes after almost 10% of the plant's 21-hundred employees tested positive for covid-19.

"we need to make sure and establish that they have a healthy and safe workforce."

Cass county commissioner ryan browing says a large number of the covid-19 cases in the county are employees at the tyson food plant.

"on tuesday it was decided that we needed to talk about having a shutdown."

According to the cass county health department 1,000 people have now been tested in the county.

275 tested positive for covid-19.

184 of (those were tyson employees and they believe that number will increase.

"when we saw a spike in cases here at tyson we've been trying to figure out how best to go about getting as many people tested as we can."

Right now cass county is holding a test site at its fairgrounds.

Another test site is on tyson's ground where employees will be tested while the plant is closed.

"once we started seeing an increase here we have shifted to testing more people who are affiliated with tyson or tyson food employees."

Logansport mayor chris martin says it's unfortunate that the largest employer in the city is the source of the majority of covid cases in the county.

But he says temporarily closing the plant to test employees is the right thing to do.

"it's not about money right now.

It's about making sure lives are saved."

In cass county, marvin bills news 18.

Cass county county commissioner ryan browning says tyson in logansport will be closed for 14 days.

State health commissioner box says several asymptomatic tyson employees were