REVEALED: 99% of COVID patients who entered an Iowa hospital in April either worked at a Tyson Foods meatpacking plant or lived with someone who did

Iowa health officials have revealed that 99 per cent of COVID-19 patients who entered a hospital in April had some type of connection to Tyson Foods.

According to a shocking ProPublica report, the virus quickly spread in Waterloo earlier this year, straining local hospitals and health centers like the Peoples Community Health Clinic.

Dr Sharon Duclos, the co-medical director of the Peoples Community Health Clinic, said a staggering 99 per cent of people who entered the clinic at the time had either been working at the local Tyson Foods meatpacking plant or lived with someone who did. 

Staffers were also treating patients who had traveled from two hours away where an outbreak had shut down another Tyson plant in Columbus Junction. 

As the cases continued to rise, Black Hawk County Sheriff Tony Thompson, joined with other local officials to urge Tyson to close the plant. 

Dr Sharon Duclos, the co-medical director of the Peoples Community Health Clinic, said a staggering 99 per cent of people who entered the clinic at the time had either been working at the Waterloo Tyson Foods meatpacking plant (file image) or lived with someone who did 

According to ProPublica, Thompson even called Tyson's corporate office and asked if the company was sending workers from Columbus Junction to work in Waterloo.

He said the company insisted that it wasn't, but Thompson said he later discovered the workers had come from Tyson's sanitation contractor, Packers Sanitation  Services Inc .

'For those workers to be authorized to work in the Waterloo plant they would have had to have been badged and carded,' Thompson told ProPublica. 

'So Tyson knew. They were just using semantics. There was somebody coming from the infected plant out of Columbus Junction into Waterloo, potentially bringing that infection with them,' Thompson added. 

PSSI confirmed to ProPublica that the workers based in Waterloo had been temporarily assigned to the Columbus Junction plant but when it closed, employees were sent home to quarantine.

However, Duclos says that's not what patients revealed to her and other staff at the hospital. 

Duclos recalled: 'We were like, "Do you have family here?" And they were like, "No. We came up here to work at Tyson".'

According to the Black Hawk County Health Department, which includes Waterloo, there have been 200 deaths and 12,098 confirmed cases in the city that has a population of 67,000. 

Of those confirmed cases, at least 1,500 came from the Waterloo Tyson Foods plant. Eight employees from the plant have died. With contact tracing, the cases tied to Tyson have risen to between 2,500 to 3,000, officials said.  

A DailyMail.com request for comment to Tyson Foods was not immediately returned Monday morning. 

The revelation comes just days after Tyson Foods fired seven top managers at the Waterloo facility, the company's largest pork plant, after an independent investigation confirmed allegations that they bet on how many workers would test positive for the coronavirus.

The company said Wednesday that the investigation, led by former US Attorney General Eric Holder, revealed troubling behavior that resulted in the firings at the plant. 

Staffers at the Peoples Community Health Clinic (file image) were also treating patients who had traveled from two hours away where an outbreak had shut down another Tyson plant in Columbus Junction

'We value our people and expect everyone on the team, especially our leaders, to operate with integrity and care in everything we do,' Tyson Foods President and CEO Dean Banks said in a statement. 

'The behavior exhibited by these individuals does not represent the Tyson core values, which is why we took immediate and appropriate action to get to the truth.'

Banks traveled to the Waterloo plant on Wednesday to discuss the actions with employees.

Tyson spokesman Gary Mickelson said the company will not release detailed findings of the investigation or the names of those fired, citing privacy concerns.

'We can tell you that Mr Holder and his team looked specifically at the gaming allegations and found sufficient evidence for us to terminate those involved,' he said.

Tyson suspended several top officials last month and retained the law firm Covington & Burling LLP, where Holder is a partner, to conduct the investigation.

Former maintenance manager Cody Brustkern said he cooperated with the investigation but was fired from his job of 10 years on Tuesday night without explanation. 

He said executives were 'protecting their brand' over their longtime managers.

'The way this was handled was very disappointing,' he said. 'I still don't know why I was fired. It's crazy.'

Lawyers for the families of four deceased Waterloo workers allege in lawsuits that plant manager Tom Hart organized a buy-in betting pool for supervisors to wager on what percentage of plant workers would test positive for COVID-19.

The revelation comes just days after Tyson Foods fired seven top managers at the Waterloo facility after an independent investigation confirmed allegations that they bet on how many workers would test positive for COVID. Safety measures are seen at a plant in Perry, Iowa 

Hart allegedly organized the pool last spring as the virus spread through the Waterloo plant and the broader Waterloo community.

A former supervisor described the wager to the plaintiffs' lawyers, saying he and nine others each put $10 into the pool while mass testing of workers took place. The winner who pulled a piece of paper with the correct percentage out of a hat got the $100 payout.

Mel Orchard, an attorney for the deceased workers' families, said the firings confirm the authenticity of some 'ghoulish' allegations in the lawsuits. 

He said Tyson 'gambled with workers' lives' by downplaying the virus and not offering adequate safety precautions.

'I'm grateful that they might be getting to the bottom of it, but it's way too late for some people,' he said. 

'I hope Eric Holder stays on this case and continues to investigate the real issue: How is it that more than one thousand employees at one plant got sick and many died?'

The lawsuits allege plant managers pressured employees to keep working, even through sickness, and that the company waited too long to shut down the plant to stem the outbreak.

Managers told workers they had a responsibility to stay on the job to ensure that Americans didn't go hungry, even while they started avoiding the plant floor themselves because they were afraid of contracting the virus.

The lawsuits name Hart, Brustkern, managers John Casey and Bret Tapken and human resources director James Hook as defendants. Attempts to reach Hart, Casey, Tapken and Hook were not immediately successful.

Tyson vowed Wednesday to open more avenues for employees to communicate concerns, to create a working group to strengthen collaborations with community leaders and to reinforce the importance of its values. 

Banks said Holder's team would help 'look for ways to enhance a trusting and respectful workplace'.

The steps came as Tyson faces continued scrutiny over its COVID-19 response, and a debate over whether Congress and states should shield companies from legal liability tied to infected workers and customers.

New York City Comptroller Scott Stinger on Tuesday called on the US Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate whether Tyson has made misleading disclosures to investors about its pandemic response.

'There is human cost to Tyson's failures - preventable deaths, hospitalizations and sick workers. These failures have material impacts on its business operations that carry serious risks for shareholders,' he said.

Separately, the family of another Tyson Foods employee is alleging in a lawsuit that he died from COVID-19 after the meat processing giant failed to implement safety protocols to guard against the coronavirus at the plant in Storm Lake, Iowa, where he worked.

Michael Everhard, 65, of Fonda, died of COVID-19 on June 18, three weeks after being diagnosed with the virus. His family contends he became infected at the Storm Lake plant where he worked for 27 years. 

The lawsuit, filed by Everhard's three children, argues that Tyson and its managers required him and other employees to continue working in an environment 'rife with coronavirus' and didn't implement safety precautions to protect them from contracting the virus, Storm Lake attorney Willis Hamilton said.

Tyson spokeswoman Liz Croston said the company has implemented several measures at its facilities that meet or exceed federal guidance for preventing the spread of COVID-19.