Six months into the pandemic, farmworkers appear to be victims of the worst of the Covid-19 crisis
State and local health departments often lack even basic knowledge about their farmworker populations, including where they are migrating from or where they are headed next as the harvest seasons change — a blind spot that has only made controlling the spread of coronavirus more difficult, Ramírez said.
Since the early days of the pandemic, farmworker advocates have been warning that the lack of on-farm standards would lead to widespread outbreaks, but their warnings have largely gone unheeded. The study said the rate of confirmed cases of Covid-19 among agricultural workers in the county was 1,569 per 100,000 on June 30. Among non-agricultural workers, the prevalence was only 471 per 100,000 workers.
Advocates say they’ve been warning since March that the state was facing a potential crisis, but it took almost two months to get a response from the administration of Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper. “People are terrified if they ask for the two weeks off — they’ll be retaliated against, they might be fired,” he said. “So they decide to not get tested or they won’t speak up.”
Lack of transportation and long work hours in the fields make it difficult for many individuals to access free health services even when they are available. Field laborers often work sunup to sundown and travel by bus or van in groups to get to farms in sparsely populated communities, explained Elizabeth Avila, program coordinator for the South Carolina Agricultural Worker Health Program.
When workers do get sick, departments don’t always collect data on their workplace or occupation and there is little evidence of robust communication between workers and employers.
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