Tennessee inmates won’t go to front of vaccine line

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A Tennessee advisory panel tasked with deciding in what order the state’s residents should receive the COVID-19 vaccine acknowledged prison inmates in the state were at high risk but concluded prioritizing them for inoculation could be a “public relations nightmare.”

The result: Prisoners are in the last group scheduled for vaccines in the state, even though the Pandemic Vaccine Planning Stakeholder group concluded, “If untreated, they will be a vector of general population transmission,” according to records of the panel’s closed-door meetings obtained by The Associated Press. To date, there is no firm timeline for prison vaccine rollouts.

The Tennessee debate reflects an issue facing states nationwide as they roll out lifesaving COVID-19 vaccines — whether to prioritize a population seen by many at best as an afterthought, separate from the public, and at worst as non-deserving. The resistance comes even though medical experts have argued since the beginning of the pandemic that prisoners were at extremely high risk for infection given they live in close contact with each other and have little ability to social distance.

“It shows a lack of morality and an absence of empathy to allow someone to die or expose them to greater risk because they happen to be incarcerated. ... Before anyone was ever imprisoned, they were someone’s child, mother, brother, father or sister first, and they remain so, and they should be considered, cared for and seen as such,” said Jeannie Alexander, executive director of the No Exceptions Prison Collective, a Nashvillebased grassroots organization.

Just a few months ago, as COVID-19 cases spiked across the U.S., the AP and The Marshall Project tallied cumulative rates of infection among prison populations. The analysis found, by mid-December, 1 in 5 state and federal prisoners in the U.S. had tested positive for the coronavirus, a rate more than four times higher than the general population. Cases have since declined but remain higher than the general population.

Tennessee ranks 24th in the nation for prisoner cases of COVID-19. To date, 1 in 3 of the state’s inmates — more than 38,800 in total — has tested positive for the virus since the outbreak began to spread nearly a year ago. More than 40 inmates have died from COVID-19.

So far, the state has inoculated an unknown number of corrections staff — Tennessee does not publicize that information as other states do — but no prisoners. Twenty-four states have allowed at least some of their inmate population to be vaccinated, including those who qualified under the state’s age guidelines or had preexisting health conditions, according to the AP and Marshall Project data.

At times over the past year, some of the United States’ largest coronavirus clusters were inside Tennessee’s prisons, with hundreds of active cases throughout multiple facilities.