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The state Department of Corrections is changing its mass coronavirus testing policy and will now test both staff and inmates at the state’s prisons.
The previous policy as part of a “mitigation strategy” was to only test staff in an initial phase. A single positive test among staff would trigger testing of any staff member not already tested as well as all inmates at that site.
Now, inmates won’t have to wait until a staff member tests positive to be included in testing at a facility.
The change comes as the corrections department announced Tuesday that tests this week on 107 staff and 27 inmates at the Northeast Correctional Complex in St. Johnsbury were all negative.
The department has also completed mass testing at its prisons in South Burlington and St. Albans, and plans to conduct testing at its three other prisons in Rutland, Newport and Springfield in the near future.
“We’re updating and modifying, basically, on a daily basis,” Al Cormier, facilities director for the corrections department, said Tuesday of the policy change.
“After discussion with the (Agency of Human Services) secretary’s office,” he added, “we’ve decided to move forward with testing staff and inmates moving forward.”
The Vermont chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has strongly criticized the earlier corrections policy, saying it amounted to a “double-standard.”
The civil rights organization contended that policy treated inmates differently from staff when it came to testing, and went against the line trumpeted by state officials that anyone in Vermont who wants a test can get one whether they are showing symptoms of Covid-19 or not.
Falko Schilling, advocacy director for the ACLU of Vermont, said he welcomed the news that the corrections department has reversed course.
“I would say that the fact that the Department of Corrections plans to test all the inmates in all of the facilities going forward is a real positive step,” he said. “This is something we’ve been calling for for a while.”
Last week, a positive test of one staff member at the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility in South Burlington, the state’s only women’s prison, prompted the mass testing of more staff and all the inmates there. Results released late last week showed no additional coronavirus cases among staff and inmates there.
Testing was done Monday at the St. Johnsbury prison, which had been designated a “surge” facility to house inmates across the state’s correctional system who have tested positive for the coronavirus.
Most of the 45 inmates who had tested positive for the coronavirus at the Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans over the past several weeks were taken to the St. Johnsbury prison for recovery before being returned to the St. Albans site.
Currently, according to the Cormier, there are now only a handful of inmates at the St. Johnsbury facility who had tested positive for Covid-19. They have all since recovered and had two negative test results, he added.
Those inmates are awaiting a return to the St. Albans facility, and were not among those tested this week in St. Johnsbury since they recently had negative tests, Cormier said.
The remaining 27 inmates at St. Johnsbury prisons who were tested this week were those serving as the kitchen crew for the facility as well as some new admissions, according to Cormier. Those tests all came back negative for Covid-19, he said.
James Baker, interim corrections commissioner, said in a statement Tuesday that because the St. Johnsbury prison was where other Covid-19 positive inmates were taken to recover that made “strict adherence to our evidence-based protocols especially important” to ensure others there did not become infected.
“This result is not just some form of luck; it was being faithful to the plan,” Baker added, referring to lack of positive test results this week from the inmates and staff at the facility. “I would like to thank Superintendent Norah Quinn for her leadership and the entire staff at NECC.”
Mass testing of staff and inmates will take place at the Marble Valley Regional Correctional Facility in Rutland next week, followed by the Northern State Correctional Facility in Newport, and then the Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield.
Schilling, of the ACLU of Vermont, said the mass testing of the inmates as well as the staff at the next facilities will provide valuable information to help make better decisions in the future.
He added, “This testing is really important to give everybody in the state a baseline of where we are and if this virus is in any of our facilities currently.”
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