A Shaw’s grocery store employee in Middlebury has coronavirus, the company confirmed Friday.
Employees at two New Hampshire Shaw’s near the Vermont border — Littleton and Woodsville — have also tested positive.
The grocery chain said it has identified cases at six locations among its 150 or so stores in New England.
The Middlebury store, at 8 Washington Street, is the brand’s only affected location in Vermont as of Friday. The others include stores in Dover, N.H., Easton, Mass., and Hyde Park, Mass.
The company did not say how many employees at each location had been diagnosed or when the cases were discovered. The Middlebury location was not included in a March 26 report by Boston NPR affiliate WBUR that listed the five other Shaw’s sites with employee cases.
Last week, the Hannaford grocery store in Barre closed for deep cleaning after that company learned an associate “may have” tested positive for the virus, a Hannaford spokesperson said.
Earlier Friday, Gov. Phil Scott said at a press conference that he was not aware of any coronavirus cases among grocery store employees in Vermont.
Asked about its response to the positive cases, a spokesperson for Shaw’s provided a statement saying that the company is doing everything it can to slow the spread of the virus.
“Even though a store goes through multiple, daily cycles of enhanced cleaning, sanitizing and disinfecting every day, if we learn that an associate has been diagnosed with COVID-19, we conduct additional thorough cleaning and disinfection,” the statement read.
Earlier this month, the State of Vermont classified grocery store workers as “essential persons” during the state’s coronavirus response, allowing them to receive free child care.
Like first responders and law enforcement, such employees are on the front lines, interacting with the public every day even as others are ordered to practice “social distancing.”
Shaw’s parent company — the Boise, Idaho-based Albertsons Companies — says it is providing two weeks of replacement pay to associates who are diagnosed with COVID-19 or who are required to self-quarantine by their doctor. The company also announced a temporary $2 an hour “appreciation” pay raise for the pay period ending March 28.
The state’s food retailers, which include grocery stores, general stores and other kinds of convenience stores, employ about 19,000 workers, according to the Vermont Retail & Grocers Association.
The trade group is not tracking coronavirus cases among its member businesses, president Erin Sigrist said.
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I hope the shaws in Burlington is having no problems, I shop there all of the time and try to wipe the handles of the carts if they aren’t out of them then I use my coat sleeves
Vermont. Beautiful green mountains, a forward thinking and resilient group of people: I had hoped we could do better. Grocery stores are not essential – food is essential. People don’t need to walk around a store touching and interacting to get food. Stockers don’t need to unload items 1 by 1 onto the shelves. Over and over the same scene has played for weeks. No amount of sanitization will do anything. We’ve known people who are symptomless are walking around, shopping, working – and we’ve known they can infect multiple people. We also know that this is not limited to the elderly and at risk, young people with no underlying conditions are dying too. The only truth is coming directly from the doctors who see the patients struggling for air, getting in lines for ventilators, and dying every day. China to Korea to Iran to Italy, Spain, the UK, and closer it approached, Seattle, San Francisco, New York, New Jersey, Boston, and now Vermont, and we are still clueless. Maybe 7 days out now from the real starting point and every day as people shop in stores they are contracting and spreading…The stores need to be taking orders and distributing limited necessities with gloves, masks and limited contact with product. Weeks ago they should have started setting up a way to take orders from people who drove into the parking lots and boxing and bagging it up with a team of people dedicated to only packaging from the palettes, no stocking, no worrying about the sterilization of the store, register, etc…The whole set up needs to change immediately. The way it is now is perfect for viral transmission. The grocery stores aren’t saving people from starvation, they are spreading the disease and increasing the number of potential deaths.
I agree with LOVEVERMONT. We should be able to order online from grocery stores, and then do curb side pick up with out interacting with anyone. If we want this mess to be over soon we have to react much harsher than we are. Stay inside. Do not go closer than 6 ft to anyone other than the people you live with. Wear a mask and gloves. End the pandemic.
With all due respect to all of the great restaurants I love in Vermont, and all of the great people who work in them, the current situation of restaurants being allowed to make take out orders is absolutely insane when there is no way to know if the thousands of restaurant workers in Vermont are possibly symptomless carriers of COVID-19. The Governor and his public health advisors need to read up on who Typhoid Mary was. She was a cook in NYC who infected 51 people with typhoid, 3 of whom died. She always appeared to be healthy and was asymptomatic.
They do have delivery service but the only problem is that they will only take cash and not credit cards. They will also not take ebt cards so that doesn’t do any good for the people that only have SNAP to live on
At the Shaw’s in Montpelier, none of the staff are wearing gloves or masks. I requested six feet from one so I could check out. She was pleasant, but indicated they were told they had to work and likely were all exposed.
Albertson’s is the largest grocery conglomerate in the US. Why is the state Health Department not going in to make certain they are REALLY “doing everything it can to slow the spread of the virus.” From disinfecting, to wearing gloves & masks, and to training that supports at least six feet between people.
Oh, and a fellow was moving quickly through the aisles looking at his phone (maybe a shopping list) and totally ignoring the 6-foot distancing protocol….
I appreciate being able to go into a store to choose my own food products (small co-ops are helping with shopping–it’s manageable for smaller orders; as is curbside service) … and so whose job is it to help see that shoppers and staff alike keep to at least six feet of distancing?