Folsom Prison reports second inmate COVID-19 death as 1,400-person outbreak subsides
A Folsom State Prison inmate died Wednesday from COVID-19, the second prisoner death at the institution following an immense outbreak that infected more than half of its inmate population, according to state corrections officials.
The inmate died at an outside hospital from “what appears to be complications related to COVID-19,” the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation announced in a written update on coronavirus activity across the state prison system.
The inmate was not identified, and no further details were released by CDCR for medical privacy reasons. The death was added to CDCR’s online data dashboard for COVID-19 activity at prisons.
With two dozen confirmed cases still considered active, CDCR’s reported infection numbers show the Folsom outbreak as nearly controlled, but not before the highly contagious respiratory disease known as COVID-19 tore through the prison for two months.
Folsom Prison suffered a flood of more than 1,400 cases: At least 1,340 inmates and 80 employees tested positive between early August and mid-October, according to data available on the CDCR website.
Of the inmates, CDCR as of Friday morning had classified 1,302 cases as “resolved,” 24 as still active and in custody, 12 as being released from custody while still active and two as deceased. The prison’s inmate population was 2,361 as of Friday, according to the COVID-19 data webpage.
CDCR first reported the outbreak in mid-August, starting as a cluster of about 100 cases; it appeared to stabilize, then exploded in size a month later. By Sept. 21, the prison had 611 active inmate cases — about one-in-four inmates were infected.
The first inmate fatality came Sept. 1, also at an outside hospital, CDCR said in a previous update late last month.
It’s unclear how many of the 24 people with active cases may still be hospitalized, but cases at outside hospitals are included within the “Active, In Custody” classification, CDCR told The Sacramento Bee in an emailed response.
Early in the outbreak, the California Prison Industry Authority — a semiautonomous agency under the umbrella of CDCR, which manufactures supplies while training inmates for work upon release — confirmed that one of its employees who had worked at Folsom Prison died of COVID-19.
For months, prisons have been hot spots for coronavirus transmission. For years before the pandemic, California’s prisons have been overcrowded beyond their design capacities, exacerbating the already difficult task of imposing social distancing restrictions on incarcerated populations. The COVID-19 situation has led CDCR to implement an array of early release and other programs designed to free up space.
With this week’s death, Folsom Prison became the fifth of CDCR’s 35 institutions to report multiple inmate fatalities from the virus. A total of 70 have died: 28 at San Quentin, 23 at the California Institution for Men in Chino, seven at Avenal State Prison, four at Chuckawalla Valley State Prison, two at Folsom and one at each of six other prisons.
In its email response to questions from The Bee about the situation at Folsom, CDCR said efforts to mitigate coronavirus outbreaks at all of its institutions include “mandatory bi-monthly testing of staff, weekly testing of staff where an outbreak is being reported, continuing to require the use of facial barriers for staff and the population, enforcing physical distancing directives, providing appropriate personal protective equipment to staff and the population, identifying isolation and quarantine space, conducting contact tracing for both staff and incarcerated population COVID-19 cases, and regular testing of the incarcerated population.”
The agency said the statewide inmate case total is the lowest it has been since May. The CDCR shows 552 active inmate cases in custody, out of 15,266 total confirmed infections during the pandemic.
There have been nearly 4,000 additional cases and 10 COVID-19 deaths among state prison employees, with one fatality at each of 10 different institutions, most recently Wasco State Prison on Oct. 4. The state said as of Thursday that 951 staff cases were considered active.
This list, found on the CDCR website, does not include the deceased CalPIA worker.
