Coronavirus: Number of cases in prisoners may be seven times higher than thought, report finds
The number of prisoners who have been infected with coronavirus may be up to seven times higher than the published figure, according to a government report.
There are 1,783 “possible or probable” cases on top of 304 confirmed infections across jails in England and Wales, Public Health England (PHE) said.
The report, published by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), states that access to testing for prisoners has been “limited and variable”, and that the number of laboratory-confirmed cases reported therefore “does not represent the true burden of infection in the prison system”.
Officials have responded to outbreaks in 75 different “custodial institutions”, the report reveals, with 35 inmates treated in hospital and 15 prisoner deaths.
The findings come after justice secretary Robert Buckland told MPs on Monday that just 33 inmates had so far been let out under the government’s emergency release programme – less than 1 per cent of prisoners eligible for the scheme.
The MoJ said on 4 April that it would free up to 4,000 prisoners who were within two months of their release date and had passed a risk assessment, while minister Lucy Frazer told the justice select committee on 15 April that a “few hundred” prisoners were set for release the next day.
But days later, the release scheme was temporarily suspended after six inmates were mistakenly freed and then recalled.
The PHE report said there have been no “explosive outbreaks” in prisons and that the number of cases is reducing, indicating that the initial wave of infections is being “contained effectively”. But it adds that “significant threat levels” remain, with measures to quarantine new and at-risk inmates needed for a year.
“In the absence of a vaccine or effective treatment, risks of large outbreaks in the prison estate will remain,” it states. “These risks may be escalated later in the year relating to relaxation of wider community restrictions, some return of normal police and court activities.”
With measures in place, the report estimates there will be 2,800 infections and 100 deaths.
One of the measures involves restricting movements of prisoners between jails – known as “compartmentalisation” – to stop the “seeding” of infections, but the report notes that it has been achieved in only a limited way.
“The most effective form of compartmentalisation is single-cell accommodation but it was recognised that this would require significant reductions in prisoner population to achieve across the prison estate (about 15,000 people was the estimate at the time the original advice was provided),” it states.
Labour’s shadow justice secretary David Lammy MP called for mass testing, contact tracing, shielding and PPE in jails across England and Wales to make sure the virus “does not spread out of control”.
He added: “The truth is that the government does not know the true scale of the Covid-19 outbreak in prisons because very few staff and prisoners have been tested for the virus.
“Explosive outbreaks in prisons are not only extremely dangerous for those on the prison estate. Scientists have warned that prisons can become pumps that spread the virus out of prisons, into hospitals and the general public.”
Speaking to MPs on Monday, Mr Buckland said: “We have restrictive regimes in prisons and have minimised inter-prison transfers to reduce the spread of the virus. We’re implementing units to protect the sick, to shield the vulnerable and to cohort new arrivals to reduce risk.
“There are positive signs that our carefully implemented approach is limiting the impact of this initial phase of the pandemic, that cases and deaths are much lower than originally predicted, but we will continue to do everything possible that this remains the case.”
He added that prisons had sufficient supplies of most personal protective equipment, but the service was low on coveralls.
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