An inmate tested positive for Covid-19 at Vermont’s only women’s prison on Saturday after coming into contact with staff and other prisoners, the Scott administration announced Monday morning.
Agency of Human Services Secretary Mike Smith said facility-wide testing is now underway at the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility, per Vermont’s policy of conducting blanket testing whenever a positive case is linked to a group living facility.
Smith said the state is investigating how the incoming inmate came into contact with other prisoners before their Covid-19 status was confirmed. He added the Covid-positive inmate did not come into contact with the prison’s “general population.”
Rachel Feldman, principal assistant to Vermont’s corrections commissioner, said the inmate came into contact with three other inmates, all of whom are being isolated.
“She was arrested with one other (now) inmate, and was housed in cells with two others upon booking. They were all in quarantine,” she wrote.
Vermont has tested all of the state’s prisoners and corrections staff over the past few weeks, as testing equipment has become more widely available. A previous round of testing at Chittenden Regional was completed on May 15 after one prison staffer tested positive, but no additional cases were identified.
In early April, an outbreak emerged at the state prison in St. Albans, forcing the state to quarantine dozens of prisoners and begin moving infected inmates to a Covid-19 isolation facility in St. Johnsbury. A total of 38 inmates and 17 staff members eventually tested positive for the virus; no deaths were attributed to that outbreak.
Prisoner advocates have ramped up their calls for reducing Vermont’s prison population amid Covid-19, with some county prosecutors reviewing cases for opportunities for early release. The state’s prison population has fallen from 1,640 inmates on March 6 to 1,395 as of June 14.
Health Commissioner Mark Levine referred to the Chittenden Regional situation briefly Monday as one of the cases that have popped up “here and there,” which the Department of Health is working to contain. Vermont reported 12 new cases of the virus on Sunday, and no new deaths.
The state also opened pop-up testing sites in Brattleboro and Rutland over the weekend due to new cases in those places.
Levine said two people at a worksite in Rutland were infected with the virus, while two adults and four children had tested positive at a shared living facility of some sort. Levine declined to offer more details until the state had learned more about the situation.
“I would call them confined in a very small way, as opposed to lots of activity around,” Levine said of the cases in Chittenden Regional, Rutland and Brattleboro.
The health commissioner added that pop-up testing sites do not mean the state believes there is significant spreading in that community. “It just means we want to make sure we can work in a very expeditious fashion to help people understand their own risk,” Levine said.
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