Thread by @weareoversight

As of March 2021, at least 388,000 incarcerated people have contracted Covid-19, more than one in every five people in U.S. prisons.

Here’s what we’ve uncovered in the past year about the coronavirus pandemic in prisons. #FOIAFriday
americanoversight.org/one-year-of-th…

We obtained documents showing that the Bureau of Prisons was slow to adopt key hygienic measures in the early months of the pandemic. The records included a March 2020 complaint that management at one facility refused to provide cleaning supplies to staff.
americanoversight.org/bureau-of-pris…

The records also reflect the lack of awareness of how much the coronavirus had already spread in the early months of 2020.

On Feb. 4, a regional public health services administrator sent an email to BOP titled “Question – Guidance Coronavirus Infection – Inmate Screening and Management.”
documentcloud.org/documents/7327…

“Are we just focusing on inmate[s] that traveled from mainland China in the past 14 days[?] The reason for asking is the CDC is referencing states with confirmed cases, such as Arizona, California, Illinois, Massachusetts and Washington,” wrote the administrator.

“Should we be concerned about inmates transferring from these states?”

The national infection control coordinator at BOP replied, “We do not need to focus on inmates from U.S. only inmates coming from China…There is currently no person to person transmission in the U.S. outside of direct contacts to persons that have just returned...”

CDC reports have since shown that direct transmission of the coronavirus within the U.S. had started as early as January, when much of the focus was on screening travelers from China.
washingtonpost.com/health/as-dead…

The records obtained by American Oversight also include emails indicating that at least some BOP officials resisted coronavirus mitigation measures or took actions that may have harmed incarcerated people who were not sick with the virus.

On March 11, 2020, BOP’s medical director was forwarded an email from a redacted sender titled “Coronavirus Concern.”
documentcloud.org/documents/7327…

The sender wrote: “Staff have not been issued any N-95 masks. Management has not even … purchased any cleaning supplies or hand sanitizer for daily staff use.” According to the sender, after they requested cleaning supplies, they were “told to go buy it yourself.”

These documents also contained a memo instructing facilities to find alternative medicines for incarcerated people who used hydroxychloroquine — the drug dubiously promoted by Trump as a Covid-19 treatment — to treat conditions like lupus and arthritis.
nytimes.com/2020/05/21/us/…

We also recently received another set of records related to Covid-19 in prisons. The documents include discussions about the early spread of Covid-19.
americanoversight.org/bureau-of-pris…

In a March 27, 2020 email titled “Covid update” gave details about a Covid-19 outbreak at Federal Correctional Complex Oakdale. It indicated that 48 incarcerated people were in quarantine; 19 were in isolation with symptoms; and 10 were hospitalized.

Only 12 of these individuals’ cases were lab-confirmed, and local health authorities had recommended against testing further individuals with symptoms to conserve testing supplies.

On March 30, the Clinical Director of Federal Detention Center Miami expressed concern about BOP’s continued transfer of incarcerated people, saying:

“Please express the seriousness of this issue to the Director as well as Attorney General Barr. They need to understand how serious this has become.”

Incarcerated people remain at risk. For more information about oversight of the pandemic’s spread among incarcerated people, visit our Oversight Tracker or read more about our investigations.
americanoversight.org/investigation/…