2 Sisters poultry plant on Anglesey re-opens after being closed due to coronavirus outbreak

A poultry plant on Anglesey which voluntarily closed its doors following a coronavirus outbreak has re-opened today.

The owners of the 2 Sisters processing facility in Llangefni decided to shut it down for 14 days last month.

The most up-to-date statistics show there have been a total of 217 COVID-19 cases associated with the factory.

However, it has now re-opened its doors as part of a phased process after Public Health Wales described the latest data emerging from the outbreak as “reassuring”.

A spokesperson for the company which runs the plant said: “We are pleased to announce we are now able to safely reopen our poultry processing factory in Llangefni from today.

“As a responsible company, we believe we took the right action by temporarily suspending operations for 14 days so we could be sure all our people were kept safe and we had an opportunity to supplement our existing control measures.

“We have spent this time working closely with our partners including the Welsh Government, Public Health Wales, the Health and Safety Executive, Anglesey County Council, the Food Standards Agency, and Unite the Union and we thank them for their support at this challenging time.

“As one of the largest employers on the Isle of Anglesey, we are more than aware of our responsibility in the community to ensure we act with care and keep everyone as safe as possible.

“Swiftly closing our factory was only the first step in doing this, and over the past two weeks we have left no stone unturned in our pursuit of ‘best in class’ Covid-19 measures.

“While it is far too early to say how and why the virus spread, at this stage we are leaving no room for doubt by briefing our people, starting Friday, on the new measures and how every single person should take personal responsibility for their own behaviours.

“We also realise there will be colleagues who have tested positive and may believe this provides them with some level of immunity.

“The reality is that we don’t know this to be true, so our teams will be making sure everyone knows we all have a shared responsibility to protect each of us and our wider community from any further outbreak.”

The company said the plant was to bring the factory up to full production starting in phases from today.

Limited production will start only after all staff are fully briefed on the measures in place to manage the risks associated with the transmission of Covid-19.

Dr Robin Howe, from Public Health Wales, said: “The monitoring and case data emerging from the 2 Sisters plant in Llangefni, Anglesey remains consistently reassuring.

“Following the multi-agency Outbreak Control Team (OCT) meeting on Wednesday 1 July, a single additional case associated with the plant was reported.

“This brings the total number of positive cases associated with the factory and its workforce with a confirmed Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) infection to a total of 217.

“This is good news and demonstrates that the control measures put in place following the concerted track and trace phase of the response has been effective. There is no evidence of sustained community transmission.

“I also want to emphasise that the actions taken by the OCT to isolate the workforce, with the full cooperation of the employer, is what has brought this outbreak under rapid control. As such, the formal testing phase of the outbreak response is now drawing to a close.

“It is important to reassure workers at the plant and the wider communities in Anglesey and Gwynedd that whenever a sustained and focused testing and contact tracing programme is put in place, it is wholly expected that we will identify additional positive cases.

“This does not mean that there has been a significant increase in the level of infection in the community as a whole, as the evidence presented to the OCT has demonstrated.”