Minnesota Covid-19 survey halted after team members report racial slurs, state officials say

“A door-to-door Covid-19 testing survey has been halted because of a number of incidents in outstate Minnesota of residents intimidating and shouting racial and ethnic slurs at state and federal public well being survey workforce,” the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) tweeted Friday.

The Group Evaluation for Public Well being Emergency Response (CASPER) survey is “a voluntary, in-person survey to grasp the impact Covid-19 is having on Minnesota communities,” the MDH website says.

“Lots of the particular person incidents might maybe have been thought-about misunderstandings,” Dan Huff, assistant commissioner of MDH’s Well being Safety Bureau, instructed CNN affiliate WCCO. “However over the previous week, a sample emerged the place the CASPER groups that included folks of shade have been reporting extra incidents than groups that didn’t embody folks of shade. Given the uncertainty of the scenario and the affect the incidents had on workforce members, CDC determined to demobilize their subject employees.”

In a prolonged assertion, Adamson stated his metropolis “by no means helps racism and violence,” and stated that on September 15 “a involved citizen” notified metropolis officers once they noticed a workforce of three folks in an out-of-state automobile, knocking on doorways “claiming to be conducting a Covid-19 survey and assessments.”

“In a really small city the place everybody is aware of everybody, a bunch of unfamiliar folks with out-of-state plates is uncommon, and to some residents its trigger for concern,” he stated.

Adamson stated the Houston County Sheriff’s Division got here to evaluate the scenario within the presence of metropolis officers and two residents. The sheriff’s division confirmed the workforce was a part of the MDH, he wrote.

Huff instructed WCCO that the survey workforce was confronted by three males, considered one of whom was armed, and the workforce felt intimidated.

“We want to make it clear there was by no means a gun or any weapon current, and no threats or aggressive habits occurred throughout the interplay between the town members and the Covid-19 workforce,” Adamson stated.

It is attainable the survey workforce “misinterpreted a big hearth division communication radio in a holster for a firearm,” Adamson stated in his publish.

On Saturday, the sheriff’s division instructed CNN there was no one who might converse on the matter and to strive again on Monday.

The mayor’s assertion didn’t tackle another incidents that the well being division referred to.

CNN Well being reached out to the CDC, and has not heard again.