State correx hit over COVID stats

Over 2,000 New York prisoners have tested positive for coronavirus since the onset of the pandemic, state data shows — yet continued confusion over how the Correction Department reports COVID-19 cases has led to fervent calls for more transparency.

The Department of Corrections and Community Supervision issues daily reports on the number of people behind bars who have tested negative one time, have tested positive, or have pending test results, among other parameters.

Yet those reports do not disclose the total number of tests conducted, according to an agency spokesman.

Without disclosing the total number of tests, it’s impossible to discern the virus’s positivity rate in the prisons based only on public data.

“What is there to be gained by not reporting the actual number of tests?” said Alexander Horwitz, executive director of New Yorkers United for Justice.

“We know how many tests were conducted in New York, we know the rate of positivity ... and here we have a population of over 35,000 New Yorkers [in prison] and we don’t have that data.”

“This has been the big sticking point and a major point of major confusion for the public, for the media and groups like ours,” he added. “For nine months the data has been presented in a confusing, and sometimes misleading way.”

The Legal Aid Society has also repeatedly called for greater clarity on the numbers, and recently asked the Corrections Department to “share meaningful data about the scope of the crisis in New York State prisons” in a letter Dec. 14 to Gov. Cuomo and Corrections Department Commissioner Anthony Annucci Dec. 14.

In the letter, the Legal Aid Society also called for more inmates to be released to curb the spread of the virus.

“We have been asking for information about the department’s response, and for better data reporting. This isn’t the first time we’ve asked for it,” said Sophie Gebreselassie, a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society Prisoners’ Rights Project. “But we wanted to hammer that point home again.”

As of Wednesday, 2,156 prisoners, 2,333 staffers and 151 parolees have tested positive for coronavirus. Twenty-two prisoners and parolees and six staffers have succumbed to the disease.

The Corrections Department tested over 35,877 in state custody as of Dec. 2. The agency’s new asymptomatic surveillance testing plan — which will test a number of inmates from each facility every weekday from multiple housing units — will go into effect Dec. 21.