Employee dies and over 100 inmates infected with coronavirus at Folsom State Prison
More than 100 inmates have tested positive for the coronavirus at Folsom State Prison, and a state prison employee who worked there has died, authorities said this week.
Folsom State Prison reports 99 inmates with active COVID-19 infections, all of them confirmed within the last two weeks, according to the CDCR coronavirus data tracker as of 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, an increase from the 56 listed in the morning. Another four inmates at Folsom had lab-confirmed cases that are now classified as “resolved,” and an additional three were released from custody with still-active cases, CDCR reports. No inmate deaths at Folsom have been reported.
Scott Walker, general manager of the California Prison Industry Authority, wrote in a staff memo obtained by The Sacramento Bee that an employee of CalPIA who worked at the prison has died “from potential complications related to the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19).”
CalPIA is a semiautonomous state agency under the umbrella of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation that trains inmates to join the workforce upon release.
Walker’s memo does not identify the employee or his specific role, but says he worked for CalPIA for more than five years. CalPIA spokeswoman Michele Kane confirmed the employee death and Walker’s internal memo in an emailed response to The Bee.
The death appears to be the 10th reported by the state among prison workers. Prior to Wednesday, CDCR had reported nine staff deaths — one in May, one in June, five in July and two in the first half of August — with each reported in separate prisons, most recently this past weekend at San Quentin.
Officials are boosting isolation and quarantine efforts and sending medical strike teams to Folsom State Prison in response to the inmate outbreak. CDCR in a Tuesday update said it recently set up five additional “isolation/quarantine housing” tents, each of which can house up to 10 patients, more than doubling the institution’s capacity of four tents set up as a proactive measure in mid-July.
Officials also set up a “large tent structure” that can handle about 80 additional patients and in which health care workers can screen the potentially infected.
California Correctional Health Care Services has been sending “nursing/health care strike teams” to assist Folsom State Prison coronavirus response, CDCR says.
CDCR’s statement did not reference any staff deaths at Folsom State Prison.
Eight CDCR employees at Folsom State Prison have tested positive, according to a separate CDCR data tracker. That figure has risen from a total of four as of early April, as The Sacramento Bee reported then.
The state prison agency has reported more than 8,900 inmate infections and close to 2,100 confirmed staff cases over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as 53 inmate deaths.
The worst outbreak so far has been at San Quentin State Prison, where more than 2,200 inmates contracted the respiratory disease. CDCR reports 25 deaths, 2,048 resolved cases, 105 active cases and 54 cases released while active from the Marin County institution, California’s oldest state prison in service.
The deadly state prison outbreaks have been attributed by lawmakers, prison reform activists and other groups to poorly handled transfers between institutions, as well as the challenge of adequate social distancing in California’s crowded prisons, many of which had inmate counts well over their design capacities.
Just under 2,500 inmates were incarcerated at Folsom State Prison as of Aug. 5, according to a weekly population report from CDCR. Its design capacity is 2,066, but it’s used to hold more than 3,000 inmates when fully staffed, the report says.
State officials have implemented multiple programs resulting in the early release of thousands of inmates in order to free up space in prisons.
CDCR on Tuesday expanded the list of institutions that will expedite release for certain medically high-risk groups with less than a year on their sentence from eight prisons to 12, per another announcement on its COVID-19 updates webpage. The four added Tuesday are the California Men’s Colony; California State Prison, Los Angeles; Mule Creek State Prison; and California State Prison, Solano. San Quentin and Folsom State Prison were among the original eight.
CalPIA in the early weeks of the pandemic announced that inmates were working to make 10,000 reusable cloth masks a day, as well as manufacturing essential supplies like hand sanitizer. At that point in April, roughly 950 inmates were making masks at seven state prisons not including Folsom, Kane said at the time.
This story was originally published August 12, 2020 at 10:39 AM.
