‘We are terrified’: Coronavirus outbreak reported at Chino women’s prison

The women sat anxiously inside their prison cells at the California Institution for Women in Chino as a guard roamed about their cell block, yelling out an ominous announcement.

A knock on a cell door, the guard said, meant that they tested positive for the coronavirus. They would be told to gather their things and prepare to be isolated for an indefinite amount of days.

Screams filled the air. Women began to hurl questions at the guards.

That scene, described by a 63-year-old inmate, was relayed to Colby Lenz of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, an advocacy group, in an email on May 12.

After a woman incarcerated at CIW tested positive for COVID-19, officials rushed to carry out a mass round of testing for inmates, said Terri Hardy, spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. And as test results began to trickle in, officials realized an outbreak of the disease had quietly taken hold of the all-women’s prison.

On May 8, 203 inmates were tested. On May 12, 191 incarcerated women were tested. The testing revealed 42 women had been infected with the disease. Officials are still waiting for results from the second round of testing. The outbreak represents a 425% jump in positive cases among inmates; only eight women at CIW came up positive prior to the May 8 testing.

At least 100 prisoners at the women’s prison have been communicating with a network of advocates on the outside through a state-sanctioned email system, describing the early moments of the outbreak. Many, older or medically at-risk, expressed anguish as they faced the possibility of serious illness or death. Advocates did not provide the name of the 63-year-old inmate for this story, saying she feared possible reprisal inside the prison.

“The thought of dying here and the fear that I smell around me right now is extremely overwhelming,” she wrote in her email. “The more announcements they make the more the level of fear and panic rises.”

After several hours of waiting in her cell, praying and listening to other inmates hollering in fear, she wrote a second message. She had tested positive for the disease.

Isolating the sick

While the numbers of positive cases at the Chino women’s prison are expected to rise in the coming days, officials began to isolate patients with the disease and placed the entire prison under quarantine, the prison said on Wednesday, May 13.

They said most of the women who have the disease were not exhibiting symptoms.

Inmates who test positive for the disease but do not show symptoms will be held in a previously unoccupied 120-bed housing unit, officials said. Those who have the disease and are experiencing symptoms will be held at an on-site medical facility or, if necessary, an outside hospital.

In an email to coalition members, a 44-year-old inmate who recently tested positive for Covid-19 described being moved to the 120-bed unit, which was dusty since it had not been utilized in years, she said. The prisoner, April Harris, said on Thursday morning that medical staff was taking inmates’ blood pressure, pulse and temperatures. At that point, they had not been given water or cleaning supplies. “This is extremely scary,” she wrote.

Harris wrote that almost her entire unit had tested positive for the coronavirus. Some of those who tested positive, she said, worked in the prison’s kitchen, canteen, where inmates can buy snacks and over-the-counter medication, and in the factory where inmates had been sewing masks.

“People who interact with everybody,” Harris wrote, describing the social nature of those jobs. “We are terrified. This entire prison needs to be tested.”

The corrections department is working with the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health to conduct additional rounds of mass testing of women at the prison, officials said.

A preventable outbreak?

The first inmate and two employees at the women’s prison tested positive for the disease in mid-April. Before last week’s testing, the virus seemed to be under control with minimal spread.

In the neighboring California Institution for Men, an all-men’s prison located five miles north from CIW, inmates and staff have been hit with the largest outbreak among California prisons with 398 inmates who tested positive with the coronavirus. Five of those inmates have died.

Advocates responded to news of the outbreak at the women’s prison with frustration and dismay, saying they had for weeks been calling on officials to institute measures to avoid one.

“This level of outbreak is very preventable and they failed to prevent it,” Lenz said.

Lack of protection

On April 6, California Coalition for Women Prisoners penned a letter to the corrections department, urging the state to allow inmates to wear face coverings inside the women’s prison. At that point, inmates had not been given masks and were cited if they covered their faces.

In the following days, officials began to provide masks for inmates inside CIW.

Hardy said 372 high-risk inmates were given masks on April 10. One week later, a shipment of masks allowed for inmates to have two masks each. On May 6, a third shipment provided a third mask for inmates.

Even so, inmates reported to advocates instances where prison guards interacting with inmates were not wearing masks themselves, which is against current CDCR policy. Inmates also reported being denied access to cleaning supplies to sanitize their unit’s showers.

CDCR officials refuted the allegation of a lack of cleaning supplies, saying that they have increased delivery at all institutions and have been providing inmates with extra supplies.

Early release for at-risk inmates

Efforts have long been underway to reduce population density inside prisons to allow for more social distancing measures inside.

After prodding from civil rights advocates, California vowed in late March to release 3,500 inmates.

Though it is not clear how many inmates have been released through the state’s order, data provided by the state show an overall population reduction at the women’s prison by 107 inmates between April 1 and May 13.

Advocates have been pushing for the release of medically at-risk inmates, such as Patricia Wright, 68, who is one of at least 300 other at-risk women incarcerated at CIW. She is ill with cancer. She was convicted for her husband’s murder in 1998, which she and family members maintain she had no involvement in. Wright is carrying out a life without parole sentence and does not qualify under the state’s criteria for an early release amid the pandemic.

“Please get me home asap,” she wrote to her advocates last week from her cell as news spread in the prison about a newly infected inmate.

Tracing the outbreak

As of Thursday, the source of the outbreak at CIW had not yet been determined. Officials said a contact investigation to trace possible exposure among staff and inmates was underway.

Advocates have long been concerned about the movement of civilian employees between CIW and its male counterpart, the California Institution for Men, especially as it is besieged by its own outbreak of the coronavirus.

Prison officials on Thursday said that in late March, the California Prison Industry Authority halted movement of its staff between the CIW and CIM.

Officials also said there are no custody staff or other corrections staff moving between the prisons.