By Jonathan Edwards
The Virginian-Pilot
NORFOLK, Va. — The Norfolk Sheriff’s Office appears to have snuffed out an outbreak of the coronavirus in the city’s jail.
Fifty-five of the jail’s roughly 1,000 inmates and deputies ultimately tested positive for the virus during an expansive testing campaign by the Sheriff’s Office, Virginia Department of Health and Sentara Healthcare.
But the 45 inmates and 10 deputies who contracted the coronavirus have since recovered. Health officials allowed the once-infected deputies to return to work, and the inmates were moved out of the jail’s “hot” zone.
“The ... outbreak response in our jail is exactly what we planned for, but hoped would not occur,” Sheriff Joe Baron said in a statement. “I believe our efforts helped prevent further spread of the outbreak.”
Baron thanked deputies and other employees who continued to work, even though they were scared of getting infected.
An outbreak in a jail has been called a “nightmare” scenario. Officials fear the virus spreading quickly in close quarters among a vulnerable population and then overwhelm the facility’s limited medical resources. (The sheriff’s office reports “almost everyone” who tested positive was asymptomatic.)
At first, the outbreak in the Norfolk jail seemed more explosive. After four deputies and an inmate tested positive, Baron ordered 72 inmates and deputies to be tested. In the first wave of results that came back, there were 26 positives and only three negatives.
With 90% of the test results coming back positive, Baron ordered late last month testing for the entire jail — all 658 inmates and 378 deputies.
“This aggressive and proactive testing is the only way to identify asymptomatic carriers of the virus,” Baron said when he launched the testing campaign. “Global pandemics pose a high risk to congregant-style facilities such as jails, and we cannot fight against an invisible enemy.”
While the number of positive cases more than doubled once testing was complete, it was nowhere near the 90% nightmare scenario envisioned when the first results came in.
Like all jailers, the Norfolk Sheriff’s Office’s job is complicated by the always-changing mix of inmates and guards at the jail. Every day, inmates who finish their sentences are cut loose into the city and are replaced by new arrestees who have the potential to infect or be infected.
Before Gov. Ralph Northam declared a state of emergency on March 12, an average of nearly 18 new arrestees were booked into the jail every day, with about the same number of inmates flowing out, according to sheriff’s office data.
Since then, the number of people coming into the jail each day has plummeted on average to just more than eight a day. The average number of inmates released each day is about 12.
Still, hundreds of guards cycle in and out of the jail every day, possibly exposing and infecting inmates to viruses they pick up at home or in the community. And deputies reporting for work, unlike new inmates, can’t be quarantined for 14 days.
Officials have tried to stop the virus from getting into the jail, or slow it from spreading when it does, Sheriff’s spokeswoman Deanna LeBlanc has said. Some of the measures the sheriff’s office has implemented are:
- Placing all new arrestees in a 14-day observation area away from other inmates.
- Temperature screening all employees before they start their shifts.
- Requiring all jail staff to wear masks.
LeBlanc celebrated the good news about the outbreak Friday with a post on the sheriff’s office Facebook page. But she stopped short of declaring victory. She said that, while officials have squelched this outbreak, there was no guarantee the virus wouldn’t sneak into the jail again and wreak far more havoc.
“We know this will be a marathon not a sprint,” she said. “There’s always a fear this could come back.”
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©2020 The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, Va.)