Houston container port affected by COVID-19 presence

The discovery March 19 that a worker at a Port of Houston container terminal had tested positive for the COVID-19 coronavirus caused a shutdown of some container port activities there.

According to the Houston Chronicle website, the Barbours Cut and Bayport terminals were closed to inbound container traffic starting at 8 p.m. March 19. “The Houston Ship Channel, which includes more than 200 private terminals and six other public terminals, is still operating,” reports the Chronicle.

However, the two temporarily closed terminals “handle 70 percent of the container cargo that travels through the public terminals,” the newspaper reports, citing a Port of Houston spokesperson.

The Port of Houston indicates the Barbours Cut and Bayport facilities will be reopened once an investigation is completed and the areas in which the employee worked undergo a cleaning and disinfecting process.

Considerable amounts of containerized paper, aluminum, red metal and stainless steel scrap are exported via Houston, while ferrous scrap leaves both via bulk shipping and containers.

In the first 11 months of 2019, according to United States Department of Commerce data, 413,000 metric tons of ferrous scrap flowed through the Houston-Galveston port region to other countries. That ranks it as the 12^th largest ferrous scrap outbound port, behind six East Coast ports, four West Coast ports, and the road and rail crossing into Mexico in Laredo, Texas.