In NC prisons, five employees and four inmates have now tested positive for COVID-19
Five North Carolina prison employees and four inmates have now been diagnosed with COVID-19, state officials say.
Two of the inmates who’ve tested positive are housed at Neuse Correctional Institution, in eastern North Carolina. The other two are at Caledonia Correctional Complex, also in eastern North Carolina. The staff members, meanwhile, worked at Central Prison in Raleigh, and Johnston Correctional Institution, Eastern Correctional Institution and Maury Correctional Institution, all in eastern North Carolina.
Prison officials haven’t identified any of them.
In Mecklenburg County, meanwhile, a contract nurse who worked at the Juvenile Detention Center has also been diagnosed with COVID-19, the county sheriff’s office announced Thursday.
She reported to work on March 22, but was sent home to self-quarantine soon afterward, the sheriff’s office said. She was tested for COVID-19 the following day and has not been back to work since. On Wednesday, the sheriff’s office learned the nurse tested positive.
Almost 150 state prison employees — out of about 16,000 prison employees system-wide — have been put on leave due to possible symptoms or exposure to the coronavirus, according to a March 30 briefing report obtained by the Charlotte Observer.
Roughly 100 inmates have been tested for the coronavirus. About 60 of those tests have been completed, and only one of the tests has come back positive so far, prison officials say.
State officials said they would take new steps to prevent an outbreak in the prisons, which house 35,000 inmates.
On Wednesday, prison officials announced they have begun taking the temperatures of every employee who enters a prison each day. Anyone with a temperature of 100 degrees or more will be denied entry, prison officials said.
Staffers are now asked a series of screening questions before they enter the prisons. Officials say they’ll deny entry to any employee who has symptoms of respiratory illness or who has been exposed in the past 14 days to anyone who is suspected or diagnosed with COVID-19.
And when new inmates are brought into state prisons from county jails, they will be isolated for 14 days.
State officials say they hope those steps will prevent a major outbreak.
Prison officials said this week they are also considering options for releasing inmates and reducing the prison population. That came on the heels of a March 27 letter to Gov. Roy Cooper from public health experts and others who are urging the release of people from youth facilities, jails and prisons to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus.
“We do not underestimate the challenges we face to keep coronavirus from entering the prison system,” Commissioner of Prisons Todd Ishee said. “... We must do all we possibly can to deny this virus a foothold in our prisons.”
The first inmate to test positive was housed at Caledonia Correctional Complex in Tillery, a men’s facility in Halifax County with a capacity of 1,038 inmates. He started having symptoms of a viral infection March 24, and was then quarantined “promptly” and tested, according to a news release. Results came back positive Wednesday afternoon, the release said. The inmate is being treated at the facility and is in isolation, according to the release.
“The entire minimum unit (at Caledonia) has been placed on quarantine, with no movements of offenders to or from the prison unless for critical need,” according to a news release.
Inmates in the housing dorm where the inmate was assigned will be issued masks, according to the release. The unit is on lockdown except for “appropriately regulated recreational time.” Inmates will eat meals in their dorms.
A state prison spokesman reported on Friday that a second inmate at Caledonia has also been diagnosed.
On Thursday, the prison system got the news that two more inmates — men who lived in the same housing unit at Neuse Correctional — had tested positive. The two inmates, both in their 40s, are now in isolation and are receiving medical treatment, state officials said.
Prisons are vulnerable to outbreaks
The employee at Maury Correctional Institution was exposed to a family member who had also become infected. Prison officials didn’t identify the employee, but said in a news release that the staffer had no symptoms and had “only very limited, brief interactions” with inmates.
Prison officials said that employee has been off the job since March 26, when the test swab was taken and sent to a lab for processing.
Housing more than 1,300 maximum and medium custody inmates, Maury is one of the state’s largest prisons. It’s located in Greene County, about 80 miles east of Raleigh.
Two of Maury’s housing units were placed on quarantine on March 30, according to a memo from the prison warden that was obtained by the Observer. Staff members assigned to those two housing units are now required to wear masks, according to the memo.
Since then, four more state prison employees have reported that they’ve tested positive, according to the state Department of Public Safety.
At Butner Federal Correctional Institution, a federal prison north of Durham, 10 inmates and one employee have tested positive for COVID-19, according to the federal Bureau of Prisons.
Prisons and jails are especially vulnerable to infectious diseases, experts say, because inmates live so closely together and use toilets just feet from their beds.
In mid-March, state officials temporarily banned all visits to the prisons in hopes of preventing an outbreak.
On March 24, state prison officials also suspended the work release program — an effort to limit inmates’ potential exposure to the coronavirus.
This story was originally published April 1, 2020 at 11:26 AM.
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