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This story was updated at 6:15 p.m.
A staff member at the state’s only women’s prison has tested positive for the coronavirus, prompting mass testing of all staff and inmates at the facility in South Burlington.
According to the state Department of Corrections, 84 staff members at the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility volunteered to be tested for Covid-19 on Monday as the start of an initiative announced late last month to test all corrections staff in the state.
Of those 84 staff members who were tested, one staff member tested positive. That staff member worked in contact with the inmates at the facility, according to Rachel Feldman, a spokesperson for the corrections department.
“We are currently conducting thorough contact tracing,” she added.
As a result of that positive test, Feldman said, the remaining 47 staff members who have yet to be tested and all 74 inmates at the facility will be tested for the coronavirus on Thursday.
Mike Smith, secretary of the Vermont Agency of Human Service, and corrections officials have said since last month that one positive coronavirus test at a correctional facility would trigger mass testing at that prison.
Chittenden Regional is the third correctional facility in Vermont where at least one person has been confirmed to have the coronavirus.
In an outbreak last month at the Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans, a total of 45 inmates and 18 staff members there tested positive for Covid-19.
Many of those inmates were then sent to the Northeast Correctional Complex in St. Johnsbury, which had earlier been set up as a “surge” facility to care for inmates across the correctional system as they recover from the virus.
Currently, less than a dozen inmates are at that surge facility. Others have recovered and returned to other facilities, or have been released.
Much earlier, on March 23, a staff member at the Northern State Correctional Facility in Newport tested positive for the coronavirus.
Ashley Messier, executive director of Women’s Justice and Freedom Initiative in Burlington, wrote in an email Wednesday that it has been difficult to be in contact with women at the facility due to Covid-19 and the shutting down of programming at the prison.
“But from the few women we have communication with directly, I think they feel they should have all been tested long ago. They are feeling frustrated and scared,” Messier wrote.
“We know that prisons across the country have become dangerous hot spots for the virus and more dangerous for the incarcerated women who live there as medical services are extremely inadequate,” Messier added. “That is true in Vermont as well.”
Smith, speaking Wednesday at Gov. Phil Scott’s press conference, said that the agency will be continuing in the coming days to test corrections officers in facilities across Vermont.
Next up, Smith said, will be the staff at the Northeast Correctional Complex in St. Johnsbury, as well as the roughly two dozen inmates at the facility that are part of the kitchen crew. Those inmates help prepare the food for the other prisoners in that “surge” facility who had tested positive for the coronavirus at the St. Albans prison and have been sent to the St. Johnsbury site to recover.
After the St. Johnsbury facility, Smith said, staff testing will take place at the Marble Valley Regional Correctional Facility in Rutland, followed by the Northern State Correctional Facility in Newport, and then the Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield.
“I will say that we’re on the hunt for this virus primarily because we aren’t seeing any symptoms at all in our correctional facilities that we already don’t know about,” he said.
Smith then launched into a defense of how the agency and corrections department has handled testing and contained outbreaks.
“There are some out there, and it’s only a few, but there are some out there that wish to portray our correctional system as something, I guess, reminiscent of Cool Hand Luke, or something like that,” Smith said, “That couldn’t be further from the truth.”
He then added, “Do they get everything right? No. But does anybody get everything right? The answer is no as well, but they get a lot right.”
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