Editorial: When prisons are covid hotspots, the community suffers, too

The coronavirus pandemic has hit certain populations hard. Seniors are at risk. So are diabetics. Cancer patients. People with pre-existing respiratory or circulatory conditions.

That makes some locations particularly important to protect. Personal care homes. Senior centers. Nursing homes were among the first major hotspots for covid-19 outbreaks.

But those are not the only places where a disease can flourish. We can’t forget about jails and prisons.

Detention facilities long have been known to be incubators for illnesses. Tuberculosis is a bacterial infection that has a lot in common with covid. It causes a deep, chronic cough, fever and fatigue. It is transmitted through tiny droplets aerosolized in water droplets when people cough, speak or sing. It can kill — in 2018, it claimed 1.5 million globally.

It is easily spread in populations of people who are not always in the best health but who are living in close quarters. Nursing homes guard against it. So do prisons.

According to the World Health Organization, tuberculosis is 100 times more prevalent in detention facilities than in the public at large. In any given country, tuberculosis in prisons accounts for about a quarter of the national diagnoses.

And so it should not be surprising that covid-19 is burning up behind bars. There were 114 inmate cases alone at Westmoreland County Prison on Monday. Allegheny County Jail had 28. There are thousands of cases distributed among the Pennsylvania state prisons.

That is bad for the inmates.

It may be worse for the community.

The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections employs more than 16,000 people. The counties employ more. Then there are the private prisons and federal facilities. A lot of people in the Keystone State make their living with people who are locked up.

And those people come and go from the prisons.

In April, at the onset of the pandemic, Gov. Tom Wolf took steps to help this by transferring some inmates to community corrections facilities or home confinement. But crime and punishment has been ongoing, and just letting people leave isn’t a good long-term solution.

That answer has to be found. The disease also is spreading through the employees.

The number of Allegheny County Jail employees who have been quarantined because of illness or exposure is affecting operations of both the kitchen and health care. Spotlight PA reported a state corrections employee was told to come to work despite being actively ill — not just exposed.

Corrections workers who are at risk don’t just stay behind the locked gates. They come home and interact with family. They go to the grocery store and pick up pizza.

The state must find a way to mitigate spread in its own facilities and find a way to support its vital workers. It also should find ways to bolster the needs of counties where jails are overwhelmed, the same way it offers assistance to nursing homes when numbers skyrocket.