COVID-19 cases at federal prison grow to at least 69. Prison admits limited testing.
After days of silence, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons on Thursday said the Federal Medical Center in Lexington so far has only engaged in limited testing of inmates and none of employees despite a COVID-19 outbreak that has infected at least 69 people at the Leestown Road prison.
The bureau released a written statement about its response to the outbreak after Kentucky’s Republican U.S. senators, Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul, each said on Twitter that their offices were contacting federal officials about the situation.
Earlier this week, the city of Lexington and the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department expressed frustration that prison administrators had been unresponsive to their questions as the novel coronavirus rapidly spread through the prison. The health department has urged anyone who has worked at the prison since April 20 to seek testing for the novel coronavirus.
In its statement, the Bureau of Prisons said inmates have been tested for COVID-19 if they have shown symptoms, such as a fever or cough. Inmates who test positive are isolated and provided with medical care as appropriate, the bureau said.
The bureau said it’s expanding testing at hard-hit “select facilities” to check asymptomatic inmates. An Abbott ID Now test machine has been deployed to Lexington’s Federal Medical Center “to conduct mass testing of inmates,” said bureau spokesman Justin Long.
Nationwide, relatively few federal prison inmates have been checked so far, despite the deaths of at least 42 of them who have tested positive.
On May 1, the bureau tweeted: “To date, of the roughly 2,700 inmates tested, approximately 70 percent have tested positive for COVID-19. However, this does not reflect the positive rate across the BOP system, which houses 146,000 prisoners in 122 facilities.” That would mean that less than 2 percent of the inmate population had been tested.
Prison employees who show coronavirus symptoms or who have been exposed to a person with COVID-19 are not tested, but they are given a formal letter to provide their local health department that is meant to ensure they get a high priority for testing, the bureau said.
All federal prisons are emphasizing good sanitation practices, and protective masks have been distributed to staff and inmates, the bureau said.
“We are deeply concerned for the health and welfare of those inmates who are entrusted to our care and for our staff, their families and the communities we live and work in,” the bureau said. “It is our highest priority to continue to do everything we can to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 in our facilities.”
A similar COVID-19 outbreak at a Kentucky state prison in Muhlenberg County, which has infected roughly 400 people and killed at least three inmates, spread for a month until Gov. Andy Beshear’s administration agreed to test everyone in the prison, inmates and employees alike.
About 40 percent of the 1,029 tests came back positive, although many of the infected inmates and staff displayed no symptoms, Beshear said. Once the state Department of Corrections had an accurate count of infected inmates, it began to segregate them.
The Federal Medical Center holds 1,248 inmates inside a complex of five buildings, with 208 more inmates housed at an adjoining minimum-security camp. About 480 prison employees have contact with inmates.
This story was originally published May 7, 2020 at 3:28 PM.
