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After a Year of COVID-19 Outbreaks, California Prisons Reckon with Mistakes

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One year into the coronavirus pandemic, the impact on California’s prisons has become clear. Confined in close and often crowded quarters, nearly half of the state's incarcerated population has become infected — more than 49,000 people.

Large outbreaks and alarming death tolls have ravaged most of the state’s prisons, from San Quentin State Prison in Bay Area and Avenal in the Central Valley to Donovan Correctional Facility in Southern California.

With the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has said the worst of the pandemic has passed. As of March 16, more than 45% of incarcerated people have received their first dose, according to prison health care services.

But a court case that has been brewing for months is keeping the issue in the spotlight. The possibility remains that prison officials may still have to take a drastic step: to halve the number of people at San Quentin, one of the hardest hit prisons in the state.

Last summer, a busload of infected inmates from the California Institution for Men in Chino were transferred to San Quentin. The men hadn’t been tested for the virus in a timely fashion, nor were they quarantined for observation when they first arrived. Within days, COVID-19 began tearing through the prison.

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“Most of my friends caught COVID, and I know a few people that also passed,” said Adamu Chan, who was incarcerated at San Quentin at the time.

While the upcoming evidentiary hearing will focus solely on what happened at San Quentin, the ruling could set a precedent for other prisons in California that have grappled with severe outbreaks, including the California Institution for Men, where 27 inmates have died from COVID-19, and Avenal State Prison where more than 3,000 people were infected.

Read the full story.

Monica Lam

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