Prisoner says spikes followed his transfer
SOLEDAD >> As COVID-19 cases continue to spike across California prisons — with nearly 10,000 active cases, including more than 7,400 recent positive tests — one man incarcerated at Salinas Valley State Prison sad he plans to take legal action over a yard-to-yard transfer that inmates say preceded a spike in COVID-19 cases in September.
Chris Washington, a 57-year-old Bay Area native, said that a COVID-19 outbreak at the prison’s A Facility occurred after he was transferred from a different yard, the D Facility, despite the fact that he was exhibiting virus symptoms. In a letter to this news organization, Washington — who says he suffers from a disease that makes him more susceptible to the virus — wrote his “many, many” requests for medical assistance went ignored and that he was transferred from D to A over his protests.
“I was finally given a C-19 test where I tested positive,” Washington wrote, later adding that the test, “was not given to me until I transferred from D Facility to A Facility … staff knew that I was a high risk to contracting COVID-19 but staff refused to help.”
The outbreak at Salinas Valley prison in August and September led to dozens of cases, and the death of one inmate in late August, according to CDCR. To contain the virus, staff quarantined everyone who tested positive into a single building.
Since recovering from the virus, Washington said he has continued to exhibit symptoms and plans on taking legal action. A CDCR spokeswoman said that she couldn’t comment on specific inmate’s allegations, but said CDCR is following guidelines laid out by California Correctional Healthcare Services.
“If an inmate is identified as a close contact to a COVID-19 patient the inmate may be moved to a designated quarantine housing unit where they receive regular testing and health care screenings multiple times a day,” Simas said in an email. “If the patient subsequently tests positive, that patient is moved away from those who are not reported positive and placed into a designated isolation housing unit where only positive patients are housed.”
Thus far, 115 prisoners and staff have died from COVID-19 complications in prisons this year, and all but 11 of them were incarcerated, according to the most recent tally from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Nearly half of those were being held at two facilities: San Quentin and California Institution for men in Chino, according to state records.
But over the past two weeks, state prisons have seen an explosion of COVID-19, with more than 7,400 new positive tests, including more than 500 at the Sierra Conservation Center in Jamestown. There also have been more than 400 new positive tests at both Mule Creek State Prison and the Correctional Training Facility in Soledad, which is located on the same property as Salinas Valley prison, which has logged more than 100 new cases over the past two weeks.
In the case of San Quentin, a summer outbreak of COVID-19 has largely been blamed on transfers from other prisons where the virus had already spread, leading to thousands of cases and 27 deaths.