How You Get Your Berries: Migrant Workers Who Fear Virus, but Toil On - The New York Times

— Workers at the largest blueberry farm in the Northeast move through the fields in small groups, fingers dancing with the speed of musicians as they pick bushes heavy with fruit.

It is what had them standing in line on a steamy morning, weeks before picking started, to be tested for the virus at the large farm in southern New Jersey, Atlantic Blueberry Company in Hammonton.

Making life even more perilous this year, they have been deemed essential workers — exempt from stay-at-home orders and a 14-day quarantine rule in New Jersey for people coming from states where the virus is spreading quickly.

In New Jersey, 3,900 farmworkers had been tested as of Thursday and 193 were positive for the virus, according to the state’s Department of Health.

The first round of testing at Atlantic Blueberry was done early in the season, before most workers had arrived.

Three of the first 56 people tested were positive for the virus.

The health risks posed by the virus have made testing a priority at the sprawling farm, according to an owner, Paul Galletta.

Galletta said of the health workers who wore white jumpsuits, masks, face shields and gloves as they gathered nasal swabs.

“This crop comes in, virus or no virus,” said Denny Doyle, president of the New Jersey Blueberry Industry Advisory Council.

In May, state health officials arranged for four federally qualified health centers to begin testing and issued safety guidelines that offered a range of ambitious — some say impractical — suggestions for farm owners.

Farmers were told to avoid bunked beds, require masks and create separate housing for anyone who tested positive for the virus, among other recommendations.

Lori Talbot, who treats migrant farm workers and viewed the list of noncompliant farms that was sent to the state’s health and labor departments.

Talbot, who runs a clinic in Bridgeton, N.J., said 18 percent of the 200 farmworkers she tested in May were positive for the coronavirus; many were asymptomatic, but two patients died of Covid-19.

Linda Flake, the chief executive of Southern Jersey Family Medical Center, one of the four health centers coordinating testing, said the perception that workers might carry the virus breeds a fear that, in ways, is worse than the risk of the disease itself.

In May at a large agricultural greenhouse in Oneida, N.Y., Green Empire Farms, one in four workers contracted the virus, according to a spokeswoman for Madison County, Samantha Field.

Of 100 laborers tested at a watermelon farm in Florida, 90 were found to have the virus, according to Florida’s governor.

In New Jersey, at Cassaday Farms in Gloucester County, 70 of the 90 workers contracted the virus, according to the owner, George Cassaday.

Cassaday, who also contracted the virus; he was tested after he could no longer smell his favorite flowers, hyacinths.