Prisons slammed with coronavirus cases — and many inmates don’t have symptoms

Prisons across the United States are experiencing outbreaks of coronavirus, but large percentages of inmates don’t have symptoms, officials say.

More than 80% of Marion Correctional Institute’s 2,500 inmates in Ohio have tested positive for the virus, the Marion Star reported last week.

Of the 2,028 inmates who tested positive, nearly 95% were not experiencing symptoms, according to Reuters.

Earlier this month, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced the state would test “every prisoner” at the correctional facilities in Marion, Pickaway and Franklin, Cleveland.com reported.

“While we know coronavirus does pose a specific threat to congregate settings this comprehensive testing will give us insight on both how to best coordinate response at these facilities, as well as data and insight on how comprehensive testing within a cohort will affect testing numbers,” DeWine told USA Today.

A prison in Michigan is experiencing something similar.

At Lakeland Correctional Facility, 785 inmates have tested positive for coronavirus — that’s more than 50% of the 1,403 that had been tested as of Monday, WZZM reported. An estimated 80% have not shown symptoms.

“The vast majority of prisoners who tested positive last week were confused as to how they were positive because they hadn’t had any symptoms,” spokesman Chris Gautz told the outlet.

Lakeland is the first prison in the state to test all its inmates, due in large part to the fact that younger, healthier prisoners help care for older prisoners and those with medical issues, WZZM reported.

Prisons in Arkansas, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia also have high percentages of inmates not experiencing symptoms.

Across the four state systems, 3,277 inmates had tested positive for coronavirus as of Saturday — and 96% were asymptomatic, Reuters reported.

“We would never have known,” North Carolina Department of Public Safety spokesman John Bull told USA Today.

Sometimes, however, a person who doesn’t have symptoms when they test positive for the virus ends up developing symptoms later, meaning they were “pre-symptomatic,” not asymptomatic, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove of the World Health Organization told ProPublica.

“Most of the people who were thought to be asymptomatic aren’t truly asymptomatic,” Van Kerkhove told the outlet. “When we went back and interviewed them, most of them said, actually I didn’t feel well but I didn’t think it was an important thing to mention. I had a low-grade temperature, or aches, but I didn’t think that counted.”

Still, many prisons are only testing inmates who have symptoms.

In a Reuters survey of all 50 prison systems, 30 responded, with most of them saying they are only testing symptomatic inmates, according to the outlet.

Florida and Texas prison systems combine for only 931 cases, Reuters reported. New York, one of the biggest coronavirus hot spots in the country, has a prison system of about 51,000 inmates and 269 reported cases, according to the outlet.

“Prison agencies are almost certainly vastly undercounting the number of COVID cases among incarcerated persons,” Michele Deitch, a corrections specialist and senior lecturer at the University of Texas, told the outlet. “Just as the experts are telling us in our free-world communities, the only way to get ahead of this outbreak is through mass testing.”

Leonard Rubenstein, a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told USA Today that testing at prisons, where social distancing is nearly impossible, emphasizes the need for broader testing in general.

“Unless you do universal testing in all environments, the risk of spread is enormous,” Rubenstein said, according to the outlet. “If you are waiting for symptoms to emerge before you do the testing, you are getting a false picture of what is going on. ... It’s too late.”

This story was originally published April 28, 2020 at 7:38 AM with the headline "Prisons slammed with coronavirus cases — and many inmates don’t have symptoms."