Francis Amendt was shocked to receive an early morning call from her son, an inmate at the Okanagan Correctional Centre (OCC), with news of a confirmed case of COVID-19 in the jail population.
The Enderby woman said her 40-year-old son, Dean Amendt, has been behind bars at the facility near Oliver, B.C., since January for petty theft fuelled by his struggle with addiction.
Amendt said her son has had ongoing fears about how the jail would be able to contain the virus if an outbreak occurred, and now his fears have materialized. “If the virus takes a number of days before it becomes known, how many people did this guy infect before he knew he had it?” she said on Thursday. “All they were told is to stay-isolated, nobody has been quarantined