After reopening defying health department orders last May, the Tesla plant in Fremont, California, saw 450 boxes of COVID-19 as of December 2020, new data of the legal website PlainSite shows (via The Washington Post)
Last March, public health officials in Alameda County, where the Fremont plant is located, prevented all businesses except “essential” from remaining open as coronavirus cases increased across the country. Tesla fought the order, but ended up closing the plant on March 23. However, a few days later, Tesla restarted production at the Fremont plant, although it violated the public health order. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on Twitter at the time that he planned to be on the shop floor with Fremont workers and insulted local authorities to arrest him.
Tesla’s reopening plan was later approved, although it was already open in defiance of March orders. Musk, a vocal critic of coronavirus on-site shelter applications last year, threatened to move the Fremont plant out of California. Tesla filed a lawsuit against Alameda County over the closing order on May 9 last year, but dropped out less than two weeks later.
The Post reports that documents obtained by PlainSite show that Tesla had about a dozen COVID-19 case reports in May 2020 and the numbers continued to rise until December, a month that saw 125 new cases of the virus at the factory. Tesla employs about 10,000 people at the Fremont facility.