MEAT giant Danish Crown yesterday announced that it has closed a large slaughterhouse in Denmark after nearly 150 employees tested positive for the coronavirus.

The abattoir in Ringsted, about 50km from the capital, Copenhagen, employs nearly 900 people and slaughters tens of thousands of pigs every week.

Danish Crown said 120 workers tested positive for Covid-19 in the first round of screenings of 600 on-site employees.

It then retested the negative cases and detected 22 additional infections.

“For this reason, we are closing the abattoir for at least a week to try and break the chain of transmission among employees on site,” said the company in a statement.

All the employees must quarantine themselves, said the firm, one of Denmark’s biggest exporters and the biggest pork product producer in Europe.

Several European slaughterhouses have been hit by the disease in recent months, particularly in Germany.

The virus cluster in Ringsted is the main active one in Denmark, where the number of cases has increased sharply in recent days.

The resurgence has forced the government to abandon plans to relax restrictions at concert halls and nightclubs, and instead, prepare new curbs.

Several dozen infections have been registered in Aarhus, the country’s second-biggest city.

Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen on Friday said Denmark intends to make masks compulsory on public transport. – AFP, August 9, 2020.