Grocery workers have been on the front lines for a year, but are struggling to get Covid’s vaccine

Grocery workers have been on the front lines for a year, but are struggling to get Covid’s vaccine

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But a vaccine that once offered these essential workers hope for their safety remains elusive for most. Although the risks of coronavirus are high and new variants of the virus are spreading, most of the more than 2.4 million low-income grocery workers in this country have not yet been eligible for the vaccine. Guidelines on vaccine eligibility continue to evolve, leaving these frontline employees unsure of when they will be able to receive the vaccine. Some workers say they are disappointed that they have not received priority vaccine and are preparing for more months of possible exposure to Covid-19 in their jobs, without the best protection against the virus.

This is the reality faced by Eric Nelson, who cannot work from home, despite the virus spreading around him and a heart problem that can put him at greater risk of having severe symptoms if he catches the virus.

The 49-year-old Kroger worker in Cincinnati needs the $ 16 an hour he earns at the store, selecting customers’ online shopping orders for pickup and delivery to pay rent and support their two children. He looked for jobs in call centers that would allow him to work remotely during the pandemic, but he couldn’t.

Nelson has close contact with thousands of people a week at the supermarket. Although Kroger’s policy requires customers to wear masks, he said some customers walk without a mask or wear it under the nose or mouth, reducing its effectiveness. Nelson usually works on weekends, which are the busiest times at work, when clients are out of work and buying food for the week.

“There are so many people in the store,” said the 11-year-old Kroger veteran and member of the United Food and Commercial Workers union. “You just don’t know who has what or who found what. You just don’t know.”

Sometimes, your store requires him to work mandatory overtime when extra orders need to be fulfilled, increasing his exposure to customers. Other times, co-workers appear sick, he said, because they cannot miss work. (A Kroger spokesman said in an e-mail that the company offers paid sick leave to workers. The company said it also offers payment of up to two weeks for workers diagnosed with Covid-19; workers placed in mandatory quarantine by a provider physician, and workers practicing self-isolation for Covid-19 symptoms.)

“I am very, very concerned,” he said. “If I get the virus, it will put me down for a while, if it doesn’t kill me.”

The arrival of the vaccine offered Nelson “light at the end of the tunnel”, but he cannot receive it in Ohio. Each state defines its own vaccine distribution phases and, after vaccinating health professionals, employees and residents of long-term care facilities, such as nursing homes, Ohio has prioritized vaccination for people over 65; people with congenital, developmental or early-onset cognitive medical conditions; and teachers. The state has not announced a timetable for when grocery workers, transit workers, rescuers, workers at essential retailers or other frontline workers will be vaccinated.
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Nelson is frustrated that he and his Kroger co-workers have been left out of the initial priority vaccination groups. He fears the virus will spread like wildfire in the store if he or a co-worker catches it, possibly damaging the community’s access to food.

“You have to think about the supermarket [workers] too, “said Nelson.” You don’t want them to get sick while they are stocking the shelves. This would spread quickly. “

The Kroger spokesman said the company invested more than $ 1.5 billion in store security measures and additional payment for workers during the pandemic.

“Kroger continues to defend federal, state and elected officials to prioritize frontline workers in the market to receive the vaccine,” added the spokesman.

High exposure works

The United Food and Commercial Workers union, which represents more than 1.3 million workers in the food and food industries, says that at least 137 workers have died from Covid-19 and more than 30,100 have been infected or exposed to the virus.

Grocery workers are in “high-exposure, high-contact jobs, and if they are infected, they can become super propagators,” said Justin Yang, assistant professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine.

Yang worked on a study, published in October in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine, which found that 20% of the 104 workers tested for Covid-19 at an undisclosed grocery store in Boston in May had active cases of Covid-19, although most did not. had no symptoms. This was an infection rate significantly higher than that seen in neighboring communities, the researchers found. Employees who dealt with customers at the store were five times more likely to test positive for Covid-19 than colleagues in other positions.

But despite the risks, in 37 states, grocery workers cannot get vaccinated, according to the union.

In December, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an initial guideline recommending that the vaccine should be offered in the second phase of launch – after healthcare professionals and residents and employees in long-term care facilities – for people over 75 years old and essential frontline workers outside health care. But the federal government changed its implementation recommendations in January, encouraging states to move older people and people with high-risk medical conditions to the vaccine priority list.

States followed suit, said Jennifer Tolbert, a health policy expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “Many states have stopped focusing on essential frontline workers and have started to focus on older adults,” she said. “By prioritizing older adults over essential frontline workers, it ends up overtaking people who are at the greatest risk of exposure in their jobs in the future.”

The supply of the vaccine is limited and “unfortunately we cannot vaccinate everyone,” she said. States were forced to make “compromises” on who to prioritize, she said, and focused on vaccinating older adults and those with certain underlying medical conditions, who are at a higher risk of suffering from serious virus disease or death if they contract it.
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“These decisions in no way change the fact that grocery workers and other frontline workers are at greater risk of exposure to Covid-19,” she said. As more vaccines become available, she predicts that states will expand eligibility to include grocery workers.

Still, many grocery workers are likely to have to work for more months without access to a vaccine that is in their stores. Supermarket and pharmacy chains, such as Kroger (KR), Walmart (WMT), CVS (CVS) and Walgreens (WBA) are administering the vaccine in some of their stores to eligible customers. And some chains, like Trader Joe’s, Kroger and Target, have announced that they will offer workers a paid break to be vaccinated. But the majority of its workers still cannot take advantage of these policies.

Both the unions and the commercial group that represents the supermarkets say that workers should be promoted in the vaccine line now.

Grocery workers “should be prioritized for the [Covid] “As the CDC initially recommended, Leslie Sarsin, CEO of the IMF, the Food Industry Association, said in an email.” Doing the opposite ignores the critical role these individuals play in keeping the country fed. “

‘Fear every day’

Sarah Demerrit, 58, who works night shifts on a Safeway in Lake Oswego, Oregon, cleaning the store, said that while she is not interacting with customers, she fears that one of her co-workers could infect her.

“I don’t feel safe at all,” she said. Her co-workers are “becoming very accommodating” and not always maintaining social distance when they are in the store, she said. “People [are] just used to it. “(Christine Wilcox, spokeswoman for Albertsons, owner of Safeway, says that safety is her priority and has” very clear social distance reminders “in stores, in addition to PPE, cleaning protocols, Covid- 19 tests and other measures to protect workers and customers.)

Demerrit would be the “first in line” to receive the vaccine, but Oregon has not qualified market workers.
Kelli, an online ordering and cashier in her early 30s at Sprouts Farmers Market in Texas, who spoke on the condition that her surname was not mentioned in this article because she was not authorized to speak to the media, said it was “heartbreaking” that grocery workers like her were not eligible to receive the vaccine in the state. Texas prioritized the vaccination of people over 65 and people over 16 with health problems after health professionals. A Sprouts spokesman said in an email that the company is “working to coordinate access to the vaccine for our workforce as supply increases and grocery workers become eligible” in different states.

She said she was fired from a restaurant in the spring and is the main source of livelihood for three children and her husband, a freelancer who had trouble finding work during the pandemic. She makes $ 13.80 an hour, she said, and has no choice but to keep working at the store. She has a 13-year-old son with asthma and is afraid of contracting the virus at work and passing it on to her son.

“I’m scared every day that I go to work,” she said. “I’m going to get my job done. But sometimes it makes it very difficult with customers.”

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