Meat processing plants have been ordered to stay open during the pandemic. For workers, the coronavirus complicates an already dangerous job.

In the face of positive coronavirus cases at meat processing plants, Smithfield Foods CEO Kenneth Sullivan said earlier in April that "the right thing for Americans is that we operate these plants."

Tyson Chairman John Tyson agreed and wrote in an open letter that "millions of pounds of meat will disappear from the supply chain" as meat processing plants close.

On April 28, Trump utilized wartime powers act to demand that meat processing plants stay open during the pandemic. The order classified meat processing as critical infrastructure.

To make reopening more feasible, Tyson is doubling bonuses and increasing health benefits, like short-term disability leave, for frontline workers.

Meanwhile, Amosa and her husband are both home now — nervously awaiting their first child. But they also have a new worry: His coronavirus test came back positive.

Associated Press writers Stephen Groves and Amy Forliti contributed to this report.

The outbreak at the plant has also presented a significant test to a governor who has resisted issuing sweeping stay-at-home orders. As Republican Gov. Kristi Noem was pressed to impose tighter restrictions on Sioux Falls, she fired back that plant workers were deemed essential and would have been reporting for duty regardless.

But reopening may be difficult, even if the South Dakota governor says it could happen in a matter of days.

Workers say they cannot fathom how butchering lines could be reconfigured to accommodate social distancing, even with new partitions and thermal imaging.

Six current employees interviewed by the Associated Press who, like Amosa's husband, insisted on anonymity because they feared they would be fired described far more haphazard measures. They said they were given flimsy masks made of hairnet-like material, hand-washing stations were in disrepair, and there was pressure to keep working even if they felt sick.

One employee told his supervisor on March 30 that he had a fever the previous day, but he was told to report to work and not to tell anyone about the fever. He worked that day, missed the next two, and returned when the fever broke, he said.

"No one asked if I went to the doctor, if I was tested," the employee said.

Lombardo said Smithfield "fully rejects any claims that employees were pressured to report to work," calling it "completely counterproductive" to do so.

Just last month, a maintenance worker at a Tyson plant in Kansas died after investigators say he got caught up in the assembly line belt.

The work is physical, starting with butchering hogs that weigh nearly 300 pounds. On the processing line, repetitive-motion injuries are common. One worker at Smithfield described often waking up with his right hand so swollen he couldn't make a fist.

Union leaders and immigrant advocates cheered the decision to close the plant indefinitely but wish more had been done sooner.

Smithfield spokeswoman Keira Lombardo told the Associated Press the difficulty in getting masks and thermal scanners led to delays in implementing some safety measures when the plant was open.

Amosa and her husband, who are originally from Ethiopia, once saw working at the Sioux Falls plant, where she also had a job until she became pregnant, as key to building their new life in the United States: It was well paid, union employment that gave them a community.

But amid the coronavirus pandemic, the couple found themselves — like many workers whose jobs cannot be done remotely — exposed on two fronts: Both their health and their livelihoods were at risk. The couple agreed to speak to The Associated Press on the condition that Amosa's husband not be named because he feared losing his job.

The plant has attracted a diversifying workforce to the city, where Somali and Vietnamese restaurants have joined diners and craft breweries. But the city remains fairly divided, with many immigrants living in neighborhoods near the plant, which employs 3,700 people in a city of about 180,000.

The diverse makeup of the meat processing plant is not unique to Smithfield's Sioux Falls plant, other major meat processing companies like Tyson are structured similarly.

The lawsuit alleges that workers did not have time to wash their hands or even wipe their noses after sneezing at a plant in Milan, Missouri. "Workers can go several hours performing grueling, monotonous work, shoulder to shoulder and sometimes even touching their coworkers, often without time to even cover their mouths when they sneeze or cough, and without any time to wash or sanitize their hands," the complaint reads.

A Smithfield representative said in a statement to Business Insider that the company has a policy of not commenting on pending litigation.

As many as half a dozen plants shut in mid-April because of outbreaks. Smithfield CEO Kenneth Sullivan said the closure of the plant, which produces roughly 5% of the U.S. pork supply each day, was "pushing our country perilously close to the edge in terms of our meat supply," in a statement after the company closed the Sioux Falls plant earlier in April.

Coughs echoed through the bathrooms.

The plant in Sioux Falls clocked case after case and was finally forced to close on April 12. It has at least 783 reported cases, making it among the largest known clusters in the United States.

He was scared he would infect his pregnant wife with the coronavirus — so much so that when he pulled into the parking lot of their apartment building, he would call Amosa to tell her he wasn't coming inside. When he eventually did, he would sleep separately from her in their two-bedroom apartment.

"I'm really, really scared and worried," Amosa told the Associated Press in April 2020.