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COVID-19 testing data in ND county jails remain unavailable

An official said she hopes that will change as the state prepares its first mass tests of county correctional facilities

By Hannah Shirley
Grand Forks Herald

GRAND FORKS, N.D. — As the state coordinates with county officials to craft a COVID-19 response plan to protect people who live in county jails, the number of people who have been tested in those facilities has yet to be made readily available. Donnell Preskey Hushka, the executive director of the County Sheriff’s and Deputies Association under the North Dakota Association of Counties, said she hopes that will change in the coming weeks, as the state prepares to schedule its first mass tests of county correctional facilities.

Inmates of state and local correctional facilities are included in North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum’s Vulnerable Population Protection Plan along with residents of nursing homes and long-term care facilities. Test results in nursing homes and long-term care facilities are updated regularly on the North Dakota Department of Health website in compliance with federal reporting requirements issued by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Preskey Hushka said it’s unclear to her why testing in correctional centers is not reported the same way.

Representatives from the North Dakota Department of Health and the Office of the Governor could not be reached for this story, despite repeated requests for comment via the North Dakota Joint Information Center.

North Dakota Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesperson Kayli Richards told the Herald this week that the only way to obtain testing data in county correctional facilities, including the number of positive cases, would be to call each facility individually. A spokesperson from the North Dakota Joint Information Center later confirmed that this was the case.

The Herald has not conducted such an audit of the state’s county correctional facilities, though, in Grand Forks, Grand Forks County Correctional Center administrator Bret Burkholder has confirmed that two people in custody have tested negative for COVID-19.

Compiling data

Preskey Hushka, who has acted as a liaison between state and county jail officials during the pandemic, said she started a Google Sheet and encouraged county jail administrators across the state to update it with their testing data. The sheet tracks pending tests, recovered cases and positive test results for inmates and employees. It does not track the total number of tests administered in each facility.

“To my knowledge, this information that we’re collecting, nobody else is,” Preskey Hushka said.

On Friday, May 22, every jail in the state, with the exception of Cass County Jail, reported zero cases in every category on the Google Sheet. But Preskey Hushka said that data is incomplete -- multiple Ward County Jail employees tested positive this week for the virus, though the Google Sheet has not been updated to reflect that. Preskey Hushka said she found out about the positive cases through a news report.

Ultimately, the goal is to conduct mass tests in every county jail in the state, Preskey Hushka said. The Herald initially learned of this goal on April 29, when a Joint Information Center spokesperson said the state at that time had not set a date for when inmates in the state’s prisons and jails would be tested. The state intended to shift its attention to North Dakota prisoners after every nursing home and long-term care facility in the state had been tested.

Since then, mass testing began a few weeks ago in DOCR facilities, and, last week, Cass County Jail became the first in the state to receive a mass test in response to a cluster of people in custody who tested positive for the virus.

As of Friday afternoon, the mass tests in state facilities have yielded five positive cases in custody at the North Dakota State Penitentiary in Bismarck and five positive cases in custody at the Missouri River Correctional Center, also in Bismarck. The test results of three other state correctional facilities have yet to be returned, according to the DOCR website. According to the Google Sheet, the Cass County Jail has reported eight positive cases of people in custody with COVID-19, including three who are considered to have recovered. The Cass County Jail reported an additional five staff members who have tested positive for the virus.

A number of other county correctional facilities have scheduled mass tests on upcoming dates, including facilities in Ward County and Richland County, Preskey Hushka said.

Different settings

But testing in county jails and testing in state prisons are two different beasts, according to Preskey Hushka.

Challenges faced by local jails are exacerbated by a DOCR policy to refuse new intakes, which took effect March 13. Richards said, since then, a few intakes from county jails have been received on a case-by-case basis, usually based on the inmate’s medical risk. While this measure will likely help protect people already in state prisons from COVID-19, it has left county jails to figure out how to house newly state-sentenced inmates. Unless jails are able to mitigate the resulting higher populations, their ability to isolate sick inmates becomes limited.

“Really, the concern isn’t as high for (DOCR), because the only people coming and going are their employees -- it’s not inmates. But at the county level is where you’re having your employees plus you’re having new inmates that are coming in,” said Preskey Hushka, stressing that the backlog of state prisoners has become a huge issue for county jails.

There are 129 state-sentenced inmates currently residing in county jails. GFCCC now houses 30 DOCR inmates, the highest of any county jail in the state. County jails will eventually be reimbursed through CARE Act dollars for their costs to house state inmates. According to the Google Sheet, GFCCC has racked up the highest bill at $152,693.69 since March 13, followed by Burleigh County at $122,925.

But locally, Burkholder has said his greatest concern isn’t about the cost of housing state-sentenced inmates, but about the effectiveness of a single point-in-time mass test - he worries that a single testing event could be rendered moot as soon as new inmates are booked into the facility.

“There wasn’t good communication with our local facilities early on, so when they were trying to figure out how to deal with the situation on their own and be proactive, they were basically having to be the solution for the state, as well. I don’t think that was a fair way to go about it,” Preskey Hushka said. “I think the state depended on the locals for a solution for them, but there hasn’t been much communication moving forward on when the counties will start to see the relief of the DOCR inmates out of their jails.”

Preskey Hushka said a plan is being developed to establish local public health departments as the primary resource for county jails going forward. She said she expects to roll out a statewide survey by Tuesday, which will seek to better understand county jails’ needs and how local health agencies can better meet those needs. While the state still plans to eventually offer at least one mass testing event to every county jail in the state, Preskey Hushka said the goal is that additional targeted testing events will be coordinated at the local level.

“I’m really just trying to get the outreach out to the jails,” she said. “Everything that I’m hearing is that this is a priority and that they want to get all the jails tested in the next couple weeks.”

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©2020 the Grand Forks Herald (Grand Forks, N.D.)

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