On Saturday, 15 prisoners & a jail warder of Rohini jail have tested positive for the coronavirus disease. Jail officials said all sixteen are asymptomatic & have been sent into quarantine.
A high alert has also been sounded in Tihar jail, where around 15,000 are currently lodged in different sub-jails. Rohini currently has 1,370 prisoners.
Director general (prisons) Sandeep Goel said a 29-year-old prisoner was admitted to the Deen Dayal Upadhyay hospital last Sunday for a surgery. He tested positive for the virus on Wednesday, & doctors informed the prisons department immediately. The department then conducted tests on 19 prisoners & five officials, who had come in contact with the first prisoner.
Sandeep Goel said that “Their test results came on Saturday & 15 of 19 prisoners tested positive for Covid-19. Of the five jail officials, one tested positive, while the others are negative for the infection. The inmates who have tested positive have been separated from the others. They are being kept in the isolation quarantine barracks. The head warder has been sent to home quarantine. A few other jail staff have also been sent to home quarantine".
All sixteen prisoners who have tested positive till date have been lodged in Rohini jail for more than 2 months. With families of prisoners barred from visiting inmates & Court hearings currently being held inside the prison over video conferencing, jail officials suspect that the virus may have been spread by an asymptomatic jail official.
To contain the disease, the bi-weekly visits of all family members have been cancelled until further notice. Prisoners have been allowed to use the jail’s phone to speak to their family members daily.
A Senior Prison Official, who didn't wish to be named, said that “At the Tihar complex, all new prisoners are kept in isolation for 14 days in jail number 2, before they are shifted to other jails. We are taking all steps to prevent the spread of the Covid-19. In Rohini, none of the prisoners is new. New prisoners are only sent to isolation wards at Tihar’s sub-jail 2 for 14 days. All prisoners in Rohini’s jail 2 have been lodged there before the lockdown started. We have used the jail’s hospital to quarantine them. Contact tracing of all positive persons is on".
Last week the jail administration had tested 3 prisoners from Tihar after 1 of them -- a rape accused -- was found to be in contact with a woman who had tested positive for Covid-19. However, all 3 test results were negative.
Tihar jail officials have been on high alert after reports emerged of a rapid Covid-19 spread at Mumbai’s Arthur Road jail, where 4,000 prisoners are lodged. The spread happened within a week of the first prisoner contracting the virus, & in all, it had affected 184 prisoners & prison staff.
It had also prompted the Maharashtra Govt. to look at releasing half the prisoners in its jails to contain the spread of the disease. Tihar jail officials have also decongested the prison by releasing around 3,000 prisoners on interim bail & parole.3
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