And while the BDF is struggling to manage their COVID case load…so is the prison.
Tonight 5 More inmates at the Belize Central Prison have been confirmed COVID positive. This brings the total to 13 prisoners and 6 guards confirmed with COVID.
And before the latest 5 tests came back positive, the prison was today placed on a 21 day full lockdown. Now, prisons are already sort-of on lockdown all the time, so what does a full lockdown mean?
Well, it starts on Tuesday October 13th, 2020 and here will be absolutely no visits, cash deposits for inmates, nor business transactions with customers of the prison will be conducted.
Also, Attorneys are encouraged not to visit their clients during this period however, any such visit will be coordinated between the prison and the Judiciary.
Plus - and this is not in the release - the prison is asking 60 officers to volunteer to stay quarantined at the jail for the 21 days. This evening the Prison CEO told us via phone that it's a crazy idea - but they have to try something drastic to keep COVID from spreading like wildfire inside the prison walls:
Virgilio Murillo - C.E.O, Kolbe Foundation
"In prison social distancing is impossible. I don't even want to use the word next to impossible, it is impossible and we don't want that thing to start spreading like a wild bushfire in this place, so I thought the most prudent thing to do was to put the prison on full lockdown. More specifically so that we can give this the ones that are infected time to heal and we want to also prevent the importation or more cases into the prison and like I said in my press release mitigate the spread."
Jules Vasquez, reporter
"We know that prison guards as we have discussed in and out they have to go home and they go back into the community and many of those communities have infections and then they can bring it back into the prison. There is no easy workaround for this. What is the solution, if any?"
Virgilio Murillo - C.E.O, Kolbe Foundation
"We are mindful of that and it might sound crazy what we are doing, but we just want to give it a try and then see what effect that lockdown has on the virus and nothing beats a trial, but a failure. We need to try it and I know after 21 days the prison staff will get to go back out, because even that we are trying to do with the 21 days. We are trying to get a set number of prison staff to remain on the camp or prison and they don't really have to go out there and mingle to bring back in the virus."
Jules Vasquez, reporter
"We have heard from inside the prison a prisoner is claiming that they didn't receive mask or start receiving masks until October 3rd."
Virgilio Murillo - C.E.O, Kolbe Foundation
"As it relates to the face masks, the prisoners weren't issue face masks simply because remember we had kept the virus out of the prison successfully right into almost the end of September. We became aware of our first officer being infected on the 28th September."
Jules Vasquez, reporter
"However, should you all have preemptively as this first guard has a positive test, should you all have preemptively started to distribute masks around the prison population?"
Virgilio Murillo - C.E.O, Kolbe Foundation
"I don't know that that would have been necessary. Like I said remember initially we were in preventive mode and when you try to prevent something, you try to put systems in place that would literally keep it out. I think the biggest push right now is to try and mitigate the spread since we already have it in the prison, but I am very optimistic that even if we have additional cases it would not be an amount that we cannot control and that is why I decided to just lockdown the prison."
Presently, all the COVID positive prisoners are asymptomatic. The 5 most recent cases confirmed this evening were from a group of 90 tests - not a very high positivity rate.
