Four new studies highlight the dangers of COVID-19 in cramped prisons with inmates transferred among facilities, scarce testing resources and personal protective equipment (PPE), and high vaccine hesitancy at US prisons and jails.Inmate transfers, genome sequencingLate last week, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) published three studies on COVID-19 in prisons.
The first report described an outbreak of COVID-19 in a Wisconsin state prison from Aug 14 to Oct 22, 2020, after six inmates from other facilities were transferred there.The medium-security prison features 15 units and, except for one unit of locked cells, all share bathrooms and common areas with congregate sleeping.