200 San Quentin workers infected, 10 inmates dead as coronavirus devastates California prison
More than 2,000 inmates at San Quentin have tested positive for the coronavirus and 10 have died, with at least three deaths reported since Saturday.
Two inmates who had been hospitalized outside the prison died Saturday, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said in a statement Monday, bringing San Quentin’s COVID-19 death toll to nine at that point. An additional death added to CDCR’s online tracker Tuesday morning brought the prison’s death toll to 10.
The most recent three inmates who died of the virus have not been identified. Three of the first seven to die were condemned inmates on death row.
The storied California prison continues to suffer the state’s worst ongoing COVID-19 outbreak among the incarcerated. As of Tuesday morning, CDCR has confirmed at least 2,030 cases at the institution: 1,454 of them active, 533 considered resolved, 33 who were released while still infected and the 10 who’ve died.
San Quentin had just under 3,400 inmates in its custody as of last Wednesday, according to a weekly CDCR population report. Its design capacity is 3,082, but the state lists its “staffed capacity” at just over 4,350 inmates.
6,400 COVID-19 cases in California prisons
As a whole, CDCR has reported more than 6,400 confirmed COVID-19 cases among inmates at all state prisons, of which nearly 2,400 were active and about 3,900 recovered as of Tuesday. Another 153 were released with still-active cases, and the remaining 35 have died, including 17 at the California Institution for Men in Chino, the site of an earlier outbreak.
In a separate tracking page last updated Friday, CDCR reported nearly 1,250 state prison employees have been infected with COVID-19, including 205 at San Quentin, the most of any California prison.
San Quentin is listed first among driving factors for elevated coronavirus activity across all of Marin County, according to the state health department’s watchlist, which is now monitoring 31 of the state’s 58 counties accounting for more than 80 percent of California’s population. About 260,000 people live in Marin County.
Lawmakers have attributed San Quentin’s deadly outbreak to a “horribly botched transfer” of 121 inmates from the Chino prison.
Faced with exploding outbreaks and needing to free up space, CDCR announced last Friday a series of early release measures that will let approximately 8,000 state prison inmates out ahead of their original sentences by the end of August.
This story was originally published July 14, 2020 at 8:49 AM with the headline "200 San Quentin workers infected, 10 inmates dead as coronavirus devastates California prison."
