More than a week after employees at a Raley’s supermarket in Benicia held a maskless celebration, an employee present tested positive for COVID-19.
The Christmas dinner was controversial for the first time after photos posted online showed unmasked supermarket employees sitting and eating close to each other.
A memo obtained by the Vallejo Times-Herald said that the employee who tested positive for coronavirus “was the last time in the workplace” on December 24. The individual in question is “currently isolating himself”.
Chelsea Minor, a spokesman for Raley’s, acknowledged that the celebration “broke the COVID-19 protocol” and that the company is taking “this situation very seriously”. She added that the store will remain open as it complied with all other mandatory safety and hygiene standards.
“If that person is working within 48 hours after the test is positive, we close the store and clean it,” she told SFGATE. “It didn’t happen in this scenario.”
She also contested claims that the meal was a “party”, as the food was provided by Raley’s and not brought in by individual workers.
But an anonymous report of the incident to the Times-Herald raised some questions, including claims that the worker had tested positive long before. Minor rejected the claim, saying the worker reported his positive test to the store on January 2. The memo was sent on January 3, she said.
It is uncertain, however, whether other employees can still test positive for COVID-19 in the coming days. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that coronavirus symptoms can appear up to 14 days after exposure. Employees who allegedly sat close to the infected person for a long time returned to work on Monday, the Times-Herald reported.
“Everyone was sitting there for a long time,” the official told the Times-Herald. “It was more than 15 minutes for sure. Some spent lunchtime back there. “