Two Vermont Department of Corrections employees in Newport have tested positive for the coronavirus.
One works at the Northern State Correctional Facility in Newport; the other is a staff member at the probation and parole office in the city.
The case among probation and parole staff is the first since the Covid-19 pandemic began early this year.
The other case brings to 26 the total number of staff members in Vermont prisons who have tested positive for the coronavirus, and is the second at the Newport prison. The first Covid-19 case in Vermont’s prisons involved a Newport staff member in late March.
The prison case was reported Nov. 26, the probation and parole office a day later.
Rachel Feldman, a corrections spokesperson, said tracing showed the prison staffer had had no contact with other staff or inmates at the facility.
“No contact, no spread,” Feldman said Tuesday.
The probation and parole officer had last been in the office Nov. 18, and tracing revealed that five people had been “potentially impacted,” according to Feldman. As a result, those who were quarantined will have that period come to a close at the end of Wednesday.
So far in the pandemic, 27 corrections staff members across all facilities, including prisons and probation and parole offices, have tested positive for the coronavirus.
The Northwest State Correctional Facility has had the most cases, 18 workers. Those cases stemmed from an outbreak there in April and early May and the workers have since recovered.
A total of 241 inmates have tested positive for the coronavirus across all Vermont prisons, including 185 who became infected this summer while serving their sentences at a privately run Mississippi prison where Vermont sends prisoners it doesn’t have the capacity for in-state.
The most recent positive Covid-19 case for a prisoner in Vermont was on Nov. 18 at the Southern State Correctional Center in Springfield.
