COVID ratings penalize host jail communities

The town of Middleton is seeing red – with good reason.

Despite having only one active case of the coronavirus among its residents, the town finds itself on the state’s high-risk list for COVID-19 transmission.

Why? Because Middleton is also home to the Middleton Jail & House of Correction, where 133 inmates have come down with the virus.

As town officials emphasized last week when 17 new jail cases were reported, there was only one active case in the community aside from the correctional facility. Officials further stated that “based on recent contact tracing, there is NO known evidence of community spread between the positive cases at the correctional facility and the community at large.”

But the state doesn’t acknowledge this viral dichotomy. It lumps all the cases into one combined caseload. And when measured against the town’s relatively small population, it results in an average daily incidence rate per 100,000 residents high enough to vault Middleton into the top of the high-risk COVID-19 list.

Frustrated town officials rightfully explain that this misleading designation has implications far beyond any “scarlet stigma” of being labeled “red” for highest-risk under the Department of Public Health’s color-coded assessment system.

Landing in the red zone prevents cities and towns from progressing into step two of the third phase of the governor’s reopening plan. That can’t occur until a red community drops to a lowerrisk category for at least three successive weeks.

“It’s really contrary to the governor’s stated intention of reopening Massachusetts, because it’s keeping us artificially from moving forward,” Middleton Town Administrator Andrew Sheehan told the Boston Herald.

“Even if things turn around quickly, we’re not going to be able to move up to the next step of reopening until sometime in November. That affects our local businesses, particularly eateries, and by extension the town, because that’s meal revenue that we’re missing,” added Sheehan.

Being in the “red zone”

The state doesn’t acknowledge this viral dichotomy. It lumps all the cases into one combined caseload.

could also potentially factor into how Middleton schools conduct classes.

The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education advises school districts in communities with three straight weekly red designations to determine whether to continue offering in-person learning.

So, you can count Middleton officials among the growing ranks of municipal leaders and state lawmakers that want Gov. Charlie Baker to omit “contained” coronavirus clusters — such as in jails and college campuses — from the data the state uses to assess a town’s weekly risk level.

While Middleton can’t completely quarantine itself from the jail’s spate of COVID-19 cases – correctional staff routinely enter and leave the facility and presumably interact with some town residents – it shouldn’t be penalized for hosting a correctional facility it doesn’t control.

The state should make a distinction between an incarcerated population in a prison or jail and other tiers of the general population.

Officials in neighboring North Andover also are fuming that its town has been branded red the past two weeks due to a coronavirus outbreak at Merrimack College that leaders say was largely linked to a dormitory actually located in the Andover section of the campus that splits the two communities.

We see considerable areas of gray in North Andover’s red-zone quarrel, but in towns like Middleton that happen to have a county jail in their midst, color its “red” beef black and white.

The state should adjust how it measures the rate of COVID-19 cases – with separate metrics for communities and enclosed populations like correctional facilities.