German farm locked down after 174 workers contract COVID-19

Some 500 workers are in quarantine on a large Bavarian farm to contain a mass coronavirus outbreak, German officials say, as they announced free COVID-19 tests for worried local residents.

A total of 174 seasonal workers have tested positive for the virus since Friday, Werner Bumeder, the district administrator of Dingolfing-Landau, tells a press conference.

Most of the seasonal employees come from Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Ukraine, he says, and had been working in close proximity harvesting cucumbers at the farm in the municipality of Mamming.

He stresses that the cluster appeared to be limited to “a closed group of people” and had not yet spread to the wider population.

The farm’s 480 employees and managers are all in lockdown on-site, with those who have tested negative staying in separate accommodation from those known to be infected.

The farm itself has been closed off from the outside world with a security team monitoring the quarantine.

— AFP