Covid cases continue to climb at Allegheny County Jail

The number of inmates at Allegheny County Jail who are positive for covid-19 has doubled in the last week.

As of Sunday, 76 inmates were positive for the novel coronavirus, with another 27 tests pending, according to the county’s website.

Also on Monday, six pods at the jail were in full isolation, while another nine were operating under quarantine, according to an email obtained by the Tribune-Review.

Shaun Conroy, 31, of Homestead, is a pod worker at the jail. He believes he contracted the virus from a correctional officer who came to work sick two days in a row. During those shifts, Conroy said the officer looked pale and coughed repeatedly with her mask down.

Conroy, who has asthma, was tested on Feb. 3 and found out that he and more than 30 others on his pod were positive on Feb. 7. He said had a fever and chills for about five days, had a sorre throat and lost his senses of taste and smell. Although he has recovered, Conroy said he still gets sharp pains in his lungs.

“The CO spread it,” he said.

Conroy, who has been at the jail for nearly seven months on a misdemeanor simple assault charge, said that the pod workers are afraid to clean the isolation pods, but are told if they don’t, they’ll lose their positions.

“It’s just going to keep spreading again. “It’s bad down here.”

Bret Grote, the legal director for the Abolitionist Law Center which does advocacy work for incarcerated people, said that the jail administration continues to operate like “business as usual.”

“They don’t have a handle on this,” he said. “They need to do mass testing, and they need to do testing of everyone at intake.”

Warden Orlando Harper said in an email on Monday that staff members go through daily screening, and newly admitted inmates are screened, as well.

He did not say they are tested.

“If there is any positive case, the Health Department may recommend that the entire pod be tested regardless of symptoms,” Harper said. “The appropriate quarantine or isolation of individuals also follows.”

Grote said that the inference to be made by a lack of mass testing is that administration wants to keep its numbers down.

“The only reason to not test is to artificially keep the number of positives low,” he said. “It’s not because they don’t have the capacity to engage in broad-based testing.”

Harper said that there are no changes being considered by jail administration at this time.

“Any recommendations would be reviewed with the teams, with safety and security of the facility being the primary consideration,” he said.

Harper reiterated a statement that’s been repeated throughout the pandemic that the jail is following the recommendations of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as the state and county health departments and Pennsylvania Department of Corrections.

But Grote said that’s not true.

In December, the CDC updated its testing guidance for incarcerated populations, recommending mass testing to prevent the spread of the virus by asymptomatic people.

That’s not happening at the jail, Grote said.

Allegheny County Councilwoman Bethany Hallam, who sits on the Jail Oversight Board, said the spike in numbers at the jail should not come as a surprise to anyone.

The question of testing protocols and universal testing comes up regularly at board meetings.

“I think the numbers we’re seeing are reflective of a poorly run facility,” Hallam said. “We’re having mass exposure. We’re having mass quarantines.”

She noted that even as the number of positives in Allegheny County have been dropping, they continue to climb at the jail.

Hallam said that implementing universal testing has been suggested at Jail Oversight and county council meetings repeatedly. She plans to raise it again this week.

“It’s a lack of political will to do so,” she said. “It’s a different excuse every time.”

Hallam suggested that County Executive Rich Fitzgerald could immediately address the issue if he wanted.

“If Rich Fitzgerald wanted it to happen, there could be universal testing tomorrow,” she said. “Our home rule charter gives him almost unilateral authority.

“What are we waiting for — someone to die? Is that what it will take for him to care about covid in the jail?”

While Harper acknowledged the recent increase in positive tests, he wrote that “there are also a number of people who have recovered. The jail administration continues to reinforce all of the mitigation measures that are in place and enforcing, as appropriate, those measures among its employees and contractors.”

According to the jail’s covid website, 192 inmates have been released/recovered.