COVID-19 cases are on the rise at Allegheny County Jail. Officials report 60 incarcerated people have tested positive for the virus, though all are showing mild symptoms and none have been hospitalized.
According to county data, 12 incarcerated people tested positive for COVID in August.
At a jail oversight board meeting Thursday, Ashley Brinkman, the jail’s health services administrator, said the number “went drastically straight up” in recent weeks, but added that the increase is “reflective of county-wide data reporting a spike of COVID infections.”
She said administrators have enacted the same mitigation procedures used during the pandemic and noted that the facility had earlier achieved “a pandemic infection rate that was in the single digits.”
“We've returned to a lot of our mitigation efforts that were related to isolation, quarantining and being able to separate the population so that we can attempt to not allow it to spread further beyond that,” Brinkman told the board Thursday.
Earlier in the pandemic, jail administrators used lockdowns to curb the spread of the virus in the facility, meaning incarcerated people received little, if any, recreation time. The practice sparked criticism from some who worried the practice might violate a voter-approved referendum banning solitary confinement.
When asked if lockdowns were currently being used as a strategy, or considered for future use, jail spokesperson Jesse Geleynse said “Individuals who test positive are isolated and transferred to a designated housing unit. Per protocols established in consultation with Allegheny Health Network, the jail’s healthcare partner, individuals who test negative twice can be cleared from isolation after seven days. All individuals are removed from isolation after 10 days.”
The federal COVID-19 public health emergency declaration expired in May. By April, COVID cases at the jail were on a steep decline, and Brinkman discontinued her monthly updates to the oversight board about infections in the facility.
“While we recognize that COVID-19 has not been eradicated, we've seen stability in its impact on our population. Transmission rates remained low for over the past year, and with that, I dedicate time spent on this reporting to other major initiatives,” she said at the time.
Though wastewater data analyzed by the county health department indicate that COVID-19 numbers county-wide are still holding steady, some local hospitals have seen a modest uptick of COVID-19 patients, most with mild illness.
People newly admitted receive a COVID test during the intake process and are quarantined if they are positive.
Brinkman said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention no longer recommend surveillance testing, so the facility is not doing random testing. Anyone incarcerated in the facility who shows symptoms takes a COVID test.
Brinkman said administrators have reached out to Allegheny Health Network, which provides healthcare in the facility, as well as the county health department for guidance.
“But at this point, they don't write our policies and procedures. The best we can do is kind of see what the epidemiology is doing with the disease itself for us to better understand and make those decisions,” she said. She added that officials are currently in the process of determining whether they should reinstate mandatory masking.
