There were 0 inmate coronavirus cases at San Quentin State Prison throughout March, April and May. Today, there are over 500. Doctors had recommended steps to avoid a potentially devastating outbreak. But health officials say the warnings went unheeded.
Health officials are working to keep a fast-moving coronavirus outbreak at California's San Quentin State Prison from spreading into the broader Bay Area community.Health officials are working to keep a fast-moving coronavirus outbreak at California's San Quentin State Prison from spreading into the broader Bay Area community.
"Unfortunately, they arrived untested and were placed within San Quentin and really kind of seeded an outbreak in a second state facility," says Dr. Matt Willis, the public health director for Marin County, where San Quentin is located."In the rush of trying to address that epidemic at Chino, that [testing] step may have been overlooked."
"I'm concerned that we will see hundreds of more cases," he said."Even if a small fraction of those people become so sick that they need to be hospitalized, it will stress our regional hospital system." Earlier this month, experts with UCSF and UC Berkeley toured the prison at the request of the body overseeing the prison. Overcrowding in the state's prison system and problems with its health care system is the subject of a long-running legal case.
"Priority must be placed on reducing the prison population at San Quentin via decarceration as it will be extremely difficult to ensure the health and safety of all people in this extraordinarily old and complex facility.""None of the cells except in one small area have walls on all sides," Dr.
Nationally, prisons and jails have come under withering criticism for failing to adequately protect inmates and staff during the Coronavirus pandemic. A"Despite having ample time and information to take the steps necessary to heed the warnings of experts and save the lives of those incarcerated in their prisons and jails, state governments across the country refused to adequately address the threat that the COVID-19 pandemic poses in jails and prisons," the report says.
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