Ohioans learned of the behind the scenes work being done in state prisons, during Gov. Mike DeWine's daily briefing.
The director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections provided updates on what's going on inside the prisons. Since early March, over 1,300 inmates were released to help with social distancing inside facilities. DeWine said 1.1 million pieces of PPE have been provided to prisons. Staff are working double shifts with help from the National Guard.
Ohio was one of the first to "mass test" their prisons. The three Ohio prisons to do this all have high numbers of people in vulnerable populations. As Marion Correctional became a hot spot in the country, they found 80 percent of people inside tested positive whether they showed symptoms or not.
"We were getting ready to open up another prison and move those people in there so that they couldn't infect anyone else," Annette Chambers Smith said, director of Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections. "That was our idea. But the science told us something different. There's way more people that are asymptomatic and positive than any of us really ever dreamed actually. And so then the clinicians looked at, OK here's what we found we're going to retest the negative people. And see if those people in those mass tested facilities turn positive. Which we have started doing already and some of them have."
The director says when one person tests positive in a prison, everyone is then being monitored. There are staff members whose only job is to clean now. And staff has the opportunity to use hotels to avoid infecting their families.
The system has made policy changes to adapt to handling the virus. Typically they wouldn't allow certain wipes or sanitizer inside because of the chemical make up.
Representatives from the CDC have visited at least one Ohio prison and gave feedback on how to adjust.
They are using a variety of methods to release people as DeWine has discussed in the last month. they continue with rolling early release when inmates enter 90 days or less of their sentence ending. 2 prison staff members in Ohio have died from COVID-19 so far.
