Editorial: Covid testing in jail is better late than never
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Allegheny County Jail is making a smart move. Starting April 12, any newly incarcerated individuals will be tested for covid-19.
A negative test will be required before being placed in general population. Refusing a test will mean quarantine.
It’s a move that seems obvious. People have been tested before they could be around others playing in basketball games. There have been negative tests required to travel. Colleges required testing before students went back to class.
All of those were voluntary. If you didn’t feel like you could pass the test, you could stay home. That isn’t exactly an option when being arrested.
But as sensible as the decision is, it’s also puzzlingly late in the game for a pandemic that already has celebrated its first birthday.
The jail has seen a roller coaster of covid-positive inmates. On March 1, there were 76 positive cases and 27 pending tests. On March 28, there were just 11 positives with 10 pending tests. Over the course of the pandemic, 340 inmates have tested positive.
It is an issue that has been brought up before by the oversight board, which opted not to test and to wait for more information from medical professionals.
Testing should have been done sooner, and not only because disease exposure is a risk for healthy inmates locked in with someone contagious.
The risk of the unknown is more than should be demanded from employees. While the percentage of positive inmates is not that high compared to the overall population, the percentage of exposed workers is much greater. While only 13.9% of inmates tested have been positive for the virus, 38% of tested staff have come up positive.
That’s just shy of three times as many.
Allegheny County is not alone in this. Jails and prisons can be breeding grounds for illness, especially respiratory diseases like covid-19, because of close and communal quarters. Westmoreland County Prison has 38 active cases of the disease.
“Hopefully, without people coming in and out,” the case numbers will subside, Warden Bryan Kline said after prisoner transports were halted by a court order last week.
But arrests and releases don’t stop — and neither do people coming in and out because they work in a prison and live in the community.
County workers deserve to be safe at work. If testing inmates can help make the working environment safer, it should be done — and it should have been done sooner.