Two more prisoners at Federal Medical Center die of COVID-19; total is now three
Two prisoners at the Federal Medical Center in Lexington have died due to the coronavirus, bringing the total number of deaths at the federal prison to three.
The total number of people who have died in Fayette County due to the coronavirus is now 12.
Kevin Hall, a spokesman for the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department, said the two prisoners who died were in their 60s.
The U.S. Bureau of Prisons said Thursday one of the prisoners was Richard Saettel, 66, who had only been at the prison since March 31.
Saettel was admitted to the hospital on April 27 and placed on a ventilator after suffering acute respiratory distress syndrome. Saettel tested positive on April 29. He died Thursday at the hospital, according to a written release from the Bureau of Prisons. He was serving a seven-month sentence for violating a condition of his supervised release on an earlier offense.
Carlos Calderon Mendoza, 60, died Thursday at a hospital where he had been since May 8 after testing positive for COVID-19 on May 6. Calderon Mendoza had long-term preexisting health conditions that were risk factors for COVID-19, the bureau of prisons said in a written release.
Calderon Mendoza has been at the Lexington federal prison since Sept. 18, 2019. He was serving a 12-year sentence out of south Florida on cocaine distribution charges.
The first prisoner from Federal Medical Center to succumb to the virus died Monday.
Juan Mata, 59, tested positive for the virus on April 30. He was admitted to the intensive care unit at a hospital the next Tuesday with hypoxemia or a low amount of oxygen in the blood. His conditioned steadily worsened and he died Monday, according to the Bureau of Prisons.
According to the Bureau of Prisons website, there are 2296 federal inmates and 275 staff who have confirmed positive test results for COVID-19 nationwide. In addition, 1,874 inmates and 287 staff have recovered. There have been 55 federal inmates who have died.
The number of new infections in Fayette County only increased by three on Friday, a dramatic decline from Thursday when the number of coronavirus cases in Fayette County jumped by 72. It was one of the largest single-day increases in Kentucky’s second-largest county since the outbreak began in early March.
But of those 72 new cases, 63 were inmates at Federal Medical Center.
The spike in the number of positive COVID-19 cases in Fayette County is largely due to an outbreak at the Federal Medical Center on Leestown Road, which has struggled to contain the virus at the federal prison since early May.
To date, 229 inmates at the federal prison have tested positive for the disease. No new positive tests at the prison were reported Friday.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons website, six staff members have also contracted the virus.
Prior to the outbreak at the Federal Medical Center, the number of new cases in Fayette County had leveled off.
The jump in the number of positive cases at the prison this week comes after the city of Lexington and the health department put pressure on the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons to increase testing. Earlier this week, the health department sent more than 200 tests to the facility.
On May 7, after days of silence, the bureau of prisons admitted that it had only conducted limited testing of inmates and none of employees. In early May, only inmates that had symptoms were tested, prison officials said at the time.
This story was originally published May 15, 2020 at 3:30 PM.
