At least 25 more people in the Albanian city of Kruja have been diagnosed with COVID-19 in the past few days. All the new cases either worked, or were relatives of people who worked, in two sewing factories in Kruja.
The two related factories had remained open until April 15. They overwhelmingly employed women from Kruja and Laç, who travelled to work in company buses. Transportation and work in close quarters with no health safety measures or physical distancing likely caused the virus to spread rapidly amid workers, who then transmitted it to their families.
Until April 17, Laç had no reported infected cases, and in a few days the number of cases jumped rapidly to 27, a number that is expected to rise in the coming days.
Meanwhile, before April 17, Kruja only had a single hotbed of the virus focused on one family with 7 infected cases, most of whom had already recovered. Now, the city has 65 infected cases.
28 infected cases in Kurbin have also been traced back to these two factories.
Factories have not been ordered by the government to shut down, even though continuing their activity risks leading to more people being infected. In Kruja alone, 20 factories who employ about 5,000 women remain open.
A factory worker, who chose to remain off-camera in fear of retaliation, told Top Channel that her and her co-workers feared that they would be dismissed by their employer if they chose to self-quarantine in their homes. She also claimed that hygienic conditions in their workplace were lacking, with workers eating where at their work stations, and soap lacking from the facilities. Management gave workers a single mask each which they put on when control came. After, they would return to their work stations that were packed together. The factory worker also claimed that management hadn’t told workers that some of them had contracted COVID-19.
The opposition Democratic Party has repeatedly called for sewing factories to be closed, and for their employees to be included in the government’s financial relief plan.
