Policy responses to the COVID-19 outbreak must strike a balance between maintaining essential supply chains and limiting the spread of the virus. Our results indicate a strong positive relationship between livestock-processing plants and local community transmission of COVID-19, suggesting that these plants may act as transmission vectors into the surrounding population and accelerate the spread of the virus beyond what would be predicted solely by population risk characteristics. We estimate the total excess COVID-19 cases and deaths associated with proximity to livestock plants to be 236,000 to 310,000 (6 to 8% of all US cases) and 4,300 to 5,200 (3 to 4% of all US deaths), respectively, as of July 21, 2020, with the vast majority likely related to community spread outside these plants. The association is found primarily among large processing facilities and large meatpacking companies. In addition, we find evidence that plant closures attenuated county-wide cases and that plants that received permission from the US Department of Agriculture to increase their production-line speeds saw more county-wide cases. Ensuring both public health and robust essential supply chains may require an increase in meatpacking oversight and potentially a shift toward more decentralized, smaller-scale meat production.

针对COVID-19爆发的政策应对措施必须在维持必要的供应链与限制病毒传播之间取得平衡。我们的结果表明，畜禽加工厂与当地社区传播COVID-19之间存在很强的正相关关系，这表明这些植物可以作为向周围人群的传播媒介，并加速病毒的传播，超出仅由人群风险所能预测的范围特征。我们估计，与邻近牲畜工厂相关的总COVID-19过量病例和死亡总数分别为236,000至310,000（占美国所有病例的6％至8％）和4,300至5,200（占美国所有死亡的3-4％），分别为到2020年7月21日，绝大部分可能与社区传播到这些工厂之外有关。该协会主要存在于大型加工设施和大型肉类包装公司中。此外，我们发现有证据表明工厂关闭使县范围的病例减少，并且获得美国农业部许可以提高生产线速度的工厂发现了更多的县范围的病例。要确保公共卫生和健全的基本供应链，可能需要加强对肉类包装的监督，并可能转向更分散，规模较小的肉类生产。