Confirmed COVID-19 cases in Saline County (pop 23,000) increased 24 between Monday and Tuesday, to a total of 96 - more than Boone County. Both Cargill and Conagra, which own meat processing facilities in the county, say their workers have tested positive.

Elsewhere in mid-Missouri, Moniteau County (pop 16,100) has 55 active cases. Their health department told me yesterday somewhere around 50 percent of those are related to plants in California, MO. One of them, Burger’s Smokehouse, has confirmed workers there tested positive.

And close to 70 individuals presenting symptoms in St. Joseph are being tested for COVID-19 today, after workers at the Triumph Foods plant they’re tested positive.

Workers I’ve talked to at various plants over the last week tell me, even though their employers have finally made some changes (masks, taking temperatures), they’re scared to go to work.

In fact, at the Smithfield plant in Milan, one worker told me they’re worried about the line they have to wait in to get their temperature taken, because it’s outside in the cold. Many shifts start in the early hours of the morning and a week ago today it snowed in Milan.

So even as the rate of new cases slows in some of Missouri’s urban areas (Columbia, Springfield), the grim reality is we’re already seeing cases in rural areas spike.

Compounding this, many of these workers are immigrants - from Latin America and parts of Africa - who live in close contact with or proximity to extended family. One of most common points of transmission for the virus generally so far has been in people’s homes.

I've been reporting on this since I started this job in December 2018 and I want to underscore the conditions at some of these places be before all this started. I talked to workers who complained about having to wear diapers because they didn't get enough bathroom breaks.

I talked to health providers who said workers ignore chronic conditions because if they miss more than a couple days, they can lose their job. These are often folks who have come to a completely foreign environment far from family or friends, because it can be profitable work.

But that means they also don't have a lot of options if they lose that work, despite the risks associated with it. If there are "front lines" in this pandemic, these workers are absolutely on it.