Published February 23. 2021 7:41PM
Kelan Lyons, The Connecticut Mirror
Three weeks into the Department of Correction’s vaccinations of the incarcerated population, 837 inmates less than 10% of the 9,034 people in prisons and jails as of Feb. 22 have received the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
The department received another 500 doses Tuesday morning. Department Director of External Affairs Karen Martucci said the DOC has used all of the shots it has received and is seeking more.
“We roll them out as they come in,” she said.
The DOC began vaccinating the 27 incarcerated individuals age 75 or older in early February and then began vaccinating people between the ages of 65 and 74.
Cloe Poisson / CTMirror.org
When her son Michael told her in June that he was being transferred to the Osborn Correctional Institution from a prison in Newtown, Dorothea Ferrigon thought his two-year ordeal was almost over.
Osborn’s location in Somers was much closer to the family’s Bloomfield home, which meant it would be easier to visit him. Even better, he’d been placed on a waiting list for a halfway house that would likely be in the Hartford area. His release, it appeared, was imminent.
But then COVID struck the prisons, the state Department of Correction halted visitations, and the family worried about “Big Mike,” who had both diabetes and asthma.