Those inmates, whose ages were not released, are in quarantine. None of the six were recent entries, arriving between July 2019 and February 2020, meaning they contracted it inside the facility.
All six were housed in the same pod.
“There’s no way these six inmates brought COVID-19 into the jail,” Armond Budish said at this morning’s daily county press briefing.
In the weeks leading up to the expected surge in coronavirus cases, local judges, prosecutors and others worked to bring down the jail’s population, which had been around 2,000 inmates throughout recent history, by releasing low-level offenders and the elderly in a preventative effort to make the facility less susceptible to an outbreak, or at least a deadly one. Officials said the current population is at 1,021, about half of the usual operating average prior to the pandemic.
“We are prepared for this,” Budish said.
Jails and prisons are uniquely problematic petri dishes for the spread of the disease. Advocates have pushed for even further reductions in jail populations and increased testing, as to identify positive patients and separate them from other inmates and guards.
Corrections officers who interacted with those inmates have been sent home and the jail is trying to determine what other inmates and areas those who tested positive interacted with this week.
This article appears in Apr 1-7, 2020.
….and?
“Presumed positive”. Sounds official. Again by their mathematical logic, there should be a hundred infected there tomorrow and the rest infected by Monday. Better convert the jail into a covid hospital.
Now we get briefings from budish as well as dewine? What a show.
And the next up… ALL of these criminals will be released out onto the streets of Cleveland at any moment now…
They will all blend right in with the countless of other daily murders, hijackings, shootings, and burglaries that take place on a daily basis around this crime-ridden city!!!
Time to recall thief Budish out of office now!!!
Against all objections by those who would have all marginalized citizens classified as criminals and jailed for life, our society will make many long overdue positive changes in the areas of improved social safety nets, public health, and most importantly criminal justice reform.