Coronavirus Testing
■ Staff from Healthy Connections, Inc. work at a one-day, pop-up, COVID-19 testing event held Thursday at the old De Queen Medical Center parking lot in De Queen, Ark. Wearing PPE gear, five employees collected tests from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at no cost to people tested. People could drive up and be tested, no matter their symptoms. The Mena, Arkansas-based community health center will hold another testing event in De Queen on June 11 and then again the next day, June 12, in Nashville, Ark. On Thursday, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson reported an additional 455 cases in Arkansas. “This is the largest single-day increase in cases since we have been reporting,” Hutchinson said.
NEW BOSTON, Texas — The Texas Department of Criminal Justice reported Tuesday that 54 inmates at the Barry Telford Unit in New Boston are positive for COVID-19.
The agency reports that 56 inmates are being housed in medical isolation.
Medical isolation is “for people who are sick and contagious. Isolation is used to separate ill persons who have a communicable disease from those who are healthy,” according to TDCJ.
The number of infected staff at Telford has remained steady since the end of last week with TDCJ reporting 53 employees with positive results.
TDCJ reported Tuesday that 139 inmates are in medical restriction.
Medical restriction is “used to separate and restrict the movement of well persons who may have been exposed to a communicable disease to see if they become ill. These people may have been exposed to a disease and do not know it, or they may have the disease but do not show symptoms,” TDCJ’s website states.
TDCJ notes that fluctuations in numbers for particular units can be explained “by a dramatic increase in the number of medically recovered offenders. That has an impact of the active positive and medical isolation categories as well. There are also number additions that include testing from the targeted asymptomatic offender testing conducted over the past several weeks as well as the first two days of results from Strike Team testing,” TDCJ’s website states. “Pending, positive and negative offender testing numbers also include medically ordered testing and are listed by the current location of the tested individual which is not necessarily the location where they were tested.”