At least 1,135 people incarcerated at San Quentin have active cases of COVID-19, according to state correctional statistics.
A dozen of those individuals have been transferred from the prison to Seton Medical Center in Daly City to receive care. Corrections officials told San Mateo County to expect up to 50 patients ill from the prison outbreak.
But the county’s coronavirus dashboard does not discern between patients transferred from San Quentin and people who were infected within the community.
County Supervisor David Canepa said he’s worried the reporting issue could lead the public to assume the virus is spreading more rapidly in San Mateo County than is the case.
“I want to alleviate that right away,” Canepa said during a supervisors’ meeting on Monday.
County Health Officer Louise Rogers told the supervisors that the county is meeting state hospitalization benchmarks related to reopening the economy “but with the numbers of transfers from the prison system that may be thrown off; we’ll be trying to account for that in our reporting.”
— Kevin Stark (@StarkKev)