Posted: Dec 18, 2020 12:12 PM CT | Last Updated: December 18, 2020
Finding out how many people in jail actually have COVID-19 is seen as critical to preventing the spread.(Evan Mitsui/CBC)
A assistant professor at the University of Saskatchewan is warning that the province s policy on COVID-19 testing in jails is inviting a massive outbreak.
The Saskatoon jail is the only centre where mass testing of staff and inmates has taken place.
The province says it will only test people in other correctional centres who show COVID-19 symptoms. Mass testing events were conducted at the Saskatoon Correctional Centre in late November as part of the overall outbreak management response after symptomatic staff and offenders in the general population tested positive for COVID-19, Ministry of Corrections and Policing spokesperson Noel Busse wrote in an email.
SASKATOON A newly released Saskatoon Provincial Correctional Centre (SPCC) inmate says he learned he had COVID-19 shortly after he was released. He believes he contracted the illness due to the handling of a still-active coronavirus outbreak that began at the facility in late November. “They play with our lives,” Kevin Crane said. “COVID is a sentence as well, might as well include that in our sentences.” As of Wednesday, 67 inmates and 18 staff members were infected with COVID-19 at SPCC, according to the province. Crane, 44, was sent to the jail in early September to serve a sentence. Shortly before he was released on Dec. 9, Crane said two inmates in his unit became infected with COVID-19.
Widespread testing was done at the Saskatoon jail in late November, after health officials declared an outbreak.
As of Nov. 21, only one inmate and one staff member at the facility had tested positive for COVID-19. By month s end, that total had climbed to more than 100 offenders and staff, eventually peaking at 142. Measures to reduce the spread included ongoing testing of offenders and staff.
Reimer said he is concerned that the approach of only testing people showing symptoms disguised the real number of cases at the jail. Ninety per cent of the people didn t even show symptoms at all, he said of the full-scale testing after the outbreak was declared.
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