Sacramento County still doesn’t know the ‘root cause’ of COVID-19 outbreak in jails

More than two months after the start of a major coronavirus outbreak in local jails, Sacramento County officials still do not know the root cause of the event that led to hundreds of inmates being infected over the course of a few weeks.

The outbreak and the state of the jails was the sole topic of discussion during a public health advisory board meeting Wednesday that drew top officials from the county’s Department of Health Services and the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office — the two agencies that oversee conditions in the jails.

An unidentified board member asked county officials if there has been a “root cause analysis of the cause of the outbreak and the difficulty in containing it?” Conflicting narratives have been offered to date.

Sandy Damiano, who oversees health services in the jail, said the outbreak was first detected during a series of inmate transfers from the downtown jail to a branch facility south of Elk Grove. During three days, at least 55 inmates were moved and at least 46 of them later tested positive for COVID-19.

“From there, it was very hard to determine because the initiation of COVID-19 into the jails could have occurred from multiple sources,” Damiano said, noting that both jails are “high-volume” facilities where several people are booked, visit and come to work every day.

“I don’t know that we have narrowed it down to one source; it could have been multiple so our plan of attack and mitigation was on all facets and it took quite a while.”

Damiano and public health officer Dr. Olivia Kasirye suggested the event was almost too difficult to track and could have originated from any one of the groups — inmates, deputies or medical staff — regularly moving in and out of the jails.

“I think we were fortunate that Sacramento County was spared for as long as it was,” said Kasirye. “Also fortunate in the fact that we got the outbreak around the time that we started vaccinating.”

Under pressure from prisoner rights groups, the county expanded vaccinations to all inmates last week. Some 244 inmates have been vaccinated to date, Damiano said.

Sheriff’s department officials did not respond to the question during the meeting. A spokesperson previously cast doubt on blaming the outbreak on the inmate transfers because their symptoms didn’t start until days later.

The number of cases continues to shift dramatically from week to week in both the Sacramento Main Jail downtown and the Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center where 48 and 102 infections were recorded last week, respectively.

‘If an inmate is sick, they do not help you’

The troubled state of Sacramento County’s two jails has been an open secret for years. In January 2020, a federal court judge approved a consent decree that mandates improvements to the facilities after a class-action lawsuit was filed on behalf of inmates.

In regular reports to a judge, court monitors describe the jail conditions in more sobering terms. A report submitted in January concluded that the medical staff has been strained without key directors over medical and mental health and an excessive lack of physicians, among other things.

The county recently hired Dr. Veer Babu as the jail’s new medical director after his predecessor, Dr. Tammy Morin, left the post last August after 17 months.

“They (inmates) have access to medical care 24-7,” said Pamela Gandy-Rosemond, the nursing director for the jails. “There is always medical staff available to see someone if they say they have any type of medical concern or if they have any type of symptoms that may be COVID-19 related.”

But their explanations, and those offered from others working in the jail, were of little comfort to more than a dozen residents and activists who attended the meeting. A number of them described a “disconnect” between what county officials said and inmate experiences.

One woman who identified herself as Pamela Emmanuel said some of the statements were not true based on her own experience while incarcerated in jail.

“If an inmate is sick, they do not help you. You hand in a sick form which is a pink kite (medical request). That pink kite is never addressed. You can be sick for days (or) weeks and you’re still waiting so that part is not true either.,” she said. “There’s a lot of false statements going on in this conversation from the nursing staff and Chief (Santos) Ramos. None of this stuff exists.”