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This story was updated at 9:36 p.m.
Testing results at the Northwest State Correctional Facility have so far revealed that 28 more inmates housed in the facility are positive for Covid-19 as well as five additional corrections staff members.
The corrections department Thursday evening released the partial findings of the testing of all the inmates and staff at the facility after it was announced earlier this week that an inmate and three staff members at the prison had tested positive for the coronavirus.
After the inmate tested positive earlier this week the department said it would do blanket testing of all prisoners at the facility as well as staff.
In the statement Tuesday evening the department reported that it did 328 tests of all inmates and “available” staff earlier in the day.
As of 1 p.m. 167 of the results had come back with the initial results showing that 28 additional inmates were positive for Covid-19 as well as five more staff members, according to the statement.
Full test results, according to the statement, will be completed and announced Friday.
The facility had been holding just under 200 inmates with a staff of a little less than 125.
The inmates who have tested positive for the coronavirus are being moved to the St. Johnsbury facility to isolate them while they recover.
“Currently these inmates are asymptomatic,” according to the statement. “The staff will be quarantined and not report to work.”
The St. Johnsbury jail had been freed up by the corrections department as a facility to house inmates who have tested positive for Covid-19. The inmates who had been at that jail were moved earlier to a work camp on the same prison campus.
“We’re very concerned about our inmate population, we’re concerned for our employees,” James Baker, interim corrections commissioner, said Thursday evening.
“Although we’re disappointed that this happened we anticipated a surge right around the time people have been talking about,” he said. “We anticipated this with these plans and now we’re executing these plans, getting people isolated with medical care.”
Baker said he couldn’t tell at this point if there is anything unique to the group of inmates who have tested positive, such as sharing a housing unit. A team will be coming into the Northwest facility to do contact tracing with the assistance of the state Department of Health to try to determine how the virus came into the facility, he added.
The Northwest prison in St. Albans Town, which has a mailing address in Swanton, was placed on lockdown earlier this week after the first inmate had tested positive. All staff and inmates at the facility have been issued masks to wear at all times, according to the statement.
In addition, according to the statement, all other Vermont prison facilities have been placed on lockdown, meaning inmates are staying in cells with meals and medication brought to them.
Advocacy groups for prisoners, including the Vermont chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, have been calling on the corrections department and the Scott administration to release as many inmates “as possible” in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The organization released a statement earlier Thursday in response to the first inmate testing positive this week, but before the latest results were revealed that evening.
“At a minimum,” the ACLU statement read, “Governor Scott should use his authority to designate for medical furlough those who are elderly and medically compromised, who are at particularly heightened risk of harm.”
The statement added, “People in our prisons were not sentenced to suffer and die in a pandemic, and the people who work in our prisons deserve to know that everything that can be done, has been done to protect them and their loved ones, before it is too late.”
Corrections officials have so far not taken up those requests to release or furlough inmates based on medical factors alone.
The Vermont inmate population as of Tuesday was 1,421, a drop from the 1,642 prisoners on March 13. That number has gone down mostly as a result of fewer people coming into the facility, through arrest or probation and furlough violations.
Steve Howard, the executive director of the Vermont State Employees’ Association, said Thursday evening he would be sending a letter to the governor urging the testing of all inmates and staff in facilities across the state’s corrections system.
Widespread testing, Howard said, “gives you at least the information you need to actually seriously contain it.”
Howard added that he hoped such widespread testing would have occurred earlier.
“I don’t fault corrections for not having the tests to do it,” he said, adding that he puts the blame on the federal government for the lack of available tests.
“I just think DOC is now scrambling to try to manage the chaos and everybody is doing it with one hand tied behind its back,” Howard said. “I just feel like a lot of this could have been prevented had the federal government reacted the way it should have.”
Tom Dalton, executive director of Vermonters for Criminal Justice Reform, tweeted about the latest news from the corrections department.
“This is tragic and obscene and inexcusable,” Dalton tweeted. “Testing of all staff and all incarcerated people at all Vermont prisons must be conducted immediately.”
Baker, speaking Thursday evening, said that’s something that is under consideration, though no decisions have been made.
“The goal is to get the Northwest facility under control,” the commissioner said. “Those discussions about further testing are going on now and we’ll be making a decision in the next couple days about that.”
As for now considering the release of inmates with medical conditions that may put them at risk for COVID-19, Baker said that is also now under review.
“I will tell you that the number of people that have medical conditions is nearly half the population,” he said. “We have to be careful about how we decide to do that.”
