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| - Meat giant Danish Crown announced Saturday it had closed a large slaughterhouse in Denmark after nearly 150 employees tested positive for the novel coronavirus. The abattoir in Ringsted, about 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the capital Copenhagen, employs nearly 900 people and slaughters tens of thousands of pigs every week. Danish Crown said 120 employees tested positive for the virus in a first round of tests of 600 employees present. It then retested all the negative cases and detected 22 additional infections. "For this reason, we are closing the abattoir for at least a week to try to break the chain of transmission among employees on site," Danish Crown said in a statement. All the employees must quarantine, said the company, one of Denmark's biggest exporters and the biggest pork product producer in Europe. Several European slaughterhouses have been hit with the virus in recent months, particularly in Germany. The virus cluster at Ringsted is the main active one in Denmark, where the number of cases has increased sharply in recent days. The resurgence has forced the government to abandon plans to ease restrictions at concert halls and night clubs, and instead prepare new curbs. Several dozen infections have been registered in Aarhus, the country's second biggest city. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said Friday that Denmark intends to make masks compulsory on public transport, even though such a measure had not even been recommended recently. map/lc/ach
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