Dr. Carl Ward giving an update on the COVID-19 cases at the Prison.
WITH Her Majesty’s Prisons Dodds making up a major percentage in the island’s recent spike in COVID-19 cases, the latest news coming out is that the worst has passed for the island’s largest penal facility. Speaking during a media conference held yesterday at the prison, Dr. Carl Ward, gave an insight into the number of cases and explained that he expected things to trend downward from there.
With the total coming up to an alarming 240 inmates and 72 staff members, Dr. Ward said that he thought it was important to explain that the numbers were not static as persons were being discharged from care. “As far as the inmate population is concerned, while you might see a number of 240, you have to bear in mind that their time of isolation within the prison, for many of them, is now over. So some 76 inmates would have completed their 14 days of quarantine yesterday and they are another 34 pending today. So when you are getting this number of total positives, you have to remember that not all of those people still have COVID, not all of those people are still in isolation,” he said.
Noting that the prison had a medical facility that was upgraded to 18 regular beds and two critical care beds with space for expansion, he added that only three persons had to be treated there and that there was currently no one in that section. “Thus far, three individuals have been treated in the facility. Two inmates and one officer. One of the inmates was known to be COVID-positive and the other two, at the time they were treated, their second result – because we would have done two rounds of testing on the staff and inmates – their second result wasn’t available at the time, but they were treated as if they were positive for safety reasons.”
Giving his reasons for saying that the worst had passed, Dr. Ward said that he did still expect some positive cases to pop up.
“I think it is also important to let people understand that as we may still expect some positive cases to pop up among staff and inmates, that this is behind the crest of the wave. The wave has crested, the wave has moved on. And because of some of the delays and challenges that we have had in the country with so many tests going on in such a short space of time, what that means is that the results you are getting back now are results that were backlogged. I think it is important for you to understand that it is not some explosion of cases at Dodds. What you are seeing coming up as positive would have been people who would have been positive several days back and we are now getting the result,” he said.
With 73 persons discharged and another 34 expected to be cleared today, Dr. Ward said that with the systems and protocols put in place, he expected for cases to drop off. “I would like to think that in certainly less than 14 days from today everything should be normal for the inmate population.” (MP)