Excerpts from the New York Times:
Lashers, who take steel rods off containers so they can be lifted by crane operators, sweat and breathe heavily as they work in pairs side by side. Shuttle drivers, responsible for transporting their fellow longshoremen to and from either ends of a dock that can stretch for miles, spend their days packed in Ford Crown Victorias and school buses with other longshoremen.
“It’s very high risk,” said Gail Jackson, 45, a shuttle driver on the docks in Charleston who contracted the virus and spent weeks off the job. “There’s no way for us to be six feet distanced.”
Last week, two federal maritime commissioners urged the C.D.C. and the Transportation Department to provide port workers with rapid coronavirus testing and early access to the coronavirus vaccine. They added that outbreaks have started to re-emerge in ports like Charleston, Philadelphia and Los Angeles, “causing substantial requirements for quarantine and threatening freight movement through these ports.”