Of the 391 employees who work at this location, 81 of them, or just under 21 percent, received positive test results that prompted Worcester health officials to close the location entirely until further notice.
"Our inspectional services department will inspect the facility to make sure that the cleaning was done in compliance with our guidelines," stated Worcester City Manager Ed Augustus.
Until "it has been professionally cleaned and all employees have been tested for coronavirus," Augustus added, this Walmart location in Worcester will not be reopening.
Previously, a Walmart spokesperson had indicated that the store would only be closed for one day while it underwent a deep cleaning. However, almost a week went by and it was still closed at the direction of local health officials.
Three other Walmart stores in Massachusetts also closed because of coronavirus
It was also reported that another three Walmart stores in the state had also closed after some of their employees tested positive for the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19).
The stores in Avon, Abington, and Quincy, all of which have since reopened following deep cleaning and store-wide testing, saw a rash of employees test positive for the novel virus, prompting government intervention.
The Quincy Board of Health had reported that 85 of its Walmart store's 212 employees were tested and 27 of them tested positive. One of these was 69-year-old Yok Yen Lee, who was reportedly rushed to the hospital with severe complications. He later died.
The Abington Walmart location was shut down for the second time after new cases of the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) were identified. And in Avon, a similar spate of positive tests prompted a closure there as well.
"Since the temporary closure of our Abington store we have been made aware of at least one new case of COVID-19," stated Eddie Bostic, the Walmart regional general manager for Massachusetts. "In Avon, we've seen the impact in the local community, which has also been felt in our store."
"The nature of this virus makes it nearly impossible to track the source of anyone's infection, so we are planning to work with health officials to review our measures, and determine additional steps, such as COVID-19 testing for associates and others who work at the store," he added.
At each of these stores, the benchmark to reopen included deep cleaning by a third-party vendor, testing of all Walmart employees, and signage and policies clearly placed throughout the stores emphasizing the "need" for PPE (personal protective equipment) and so-called social distancing.
How many of these cases were false positives?
One thing to keep in mind here is that just because some of these Walmart employees in Massachusetts tested positive for the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) does not necessarily mean that they actually have the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19).
The reason for this is that coronavirus testing produces a large number of false positives, meaning the data is being skewed by faulty test results.
This was seen in recent samples sent to the World Health Organization (WHO) by the African country of Tanzania, which collected samples from a goat, a pheasant, and a papaya fruit, all of which tested "positive" using test kits that we can only speculate are made in China, which thus means that they are questionable at best in terms of accuracy.
"We now have enough knowledge of the “false positives” testing fiasco to be able to say, with confidence, that the official coronavirus infection numbers are wildly over-stated," warns Mike Adams, the Health Ranger. "Nowhere near that number of people have actually been infected."
For more of the latest news about the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19), be sure to check out Pandemic.news.
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