SLO County Jail in ‘a state of hyper-vigilance’ after COVID-19 cases, top doctor says
San Luis Obispo County Jail staff are “in a state of hyper-vigilance” after a handful of inmates and deputies tested positive for COVID-19, the jail’s top doctor said.
Though staff members have isolated any inmate or sent home any employee who could have come into contact with the disease and has tested roughly 100 inmates in the last 48 hours, chief medical officer Dr. Christy Mulkerin says it’s too early to say that a potential outbreak has been contained.
On Saturday, the Sheriff’s Office announced that two County Jail inmates tested positive for coronavirus, the first reported cases of COVID-19 at the facility. At the California Men’s Colony, 11 inmates have tested positive.
A third inmate case was reported Sunday, as well as an infected patrol deputy, the third member of Sheriff’s Office staff to contract the disease after two correctional deputies tested positive last week.
Those deputies had contact with inmates while at work and were required to wear a mask during those interactions, the Sheriff’s Office said.
The Sheriff’s Office said Sunday that it has recently tested more than 300 inmates for COVID-19 with 50 of those tests conducted since Saturday.
Doctor is in charge of controlling COVID-19
As chief medical officer at the jail, Mulkerin’s job is to oversee all medical, mental health and dental services provided there, and in recent months, she has been in charge of developing and implementing the facility’s infection control plan.
Mulkerin was hired to fill the newly created position in early 2018 following a series of County Jail inmate deaths, including the death of Atascadero resident Andrew Holland, which resulted in a $5 million settlement in July 2017.
She said by phone Monday afternoon that staff at the County Jail are aggressively carrying out heightened safety protocols put in place in March, before the county began seeing its first community coronavirus cases.
While neighboring counties’ jails such as Santa Barbara and Monterey are struggling to suppress outbreaks that began in March, San Luis Obispo County Jail did not have a positive case until last week.
Mulkerin also noted SLO County’s smaller number of positive community cases, numbers that spiked dramatically in the weeks preceding the jail’s first case.
Following last week’s cases, jail staff is aggressively trying to hunt down any trace of a possibly infected inmate or employee and testing and re-testing inmates as appropriate, she said.
Jail testing inmates
She said that as of Monday afternoon, roughly 50 inmates had been tested for COVID-19 within the previous 24 hours and were awaiting results, and she said 50 more were planned to be tested in the next 24 hours.
Mulkerin said that depending on an inmate’s situation, they may be re-tested several times during their period of custody.
“We’re looking for it, and the question is, is it hiding somewhere?” Mulkerin said. “It’s too soon to say it’s contained.”
Every new inmate to arrive at the jail is screened outside the facility and quarantined in one of two designated housing units for 14 days, which is the incubation period for the disease. If they report any symptoms, the inmate is immediately isolated in the jail’s medical wing, she said.
After the state discontinued its “zero bail” policy for nonviolent arrests, the size of the jail population has begun to rise again, but Mulkerin said the jail is not at risk of running out of room in its quarantine units or medical wing.
“The most difficult thing is that any congregate living setting is just a really high-risk setting for any disease,” Mulkerin said.
She added that employees have been responsible in calling in sick when feeling symptoms.
“I think the morale at the Sheriff’s Office is everyone’s kind of feeling the same way, worried about the increasing rates in our community,” she said. “People assumed the day would come when we would have COVID in the jail, though we wanted that day to never come.”
