As COVID-19 infections rapidly spread through California prisons, authorities announced Monday the replacement of the chief medical officer of the state correction system. The move came when Governor Gavin Newsom criticized a previous decision to transfer hundreds of prisoners from a Chino facility that had been fighting an outbreak.
The leadership shakeup occurred when corrections officials reported three more deaths over the weekend of July 4 among inmates at the San Quintín State Prison, where more than a third of inmates tested positive. The death toll is now at six. Most of the facility’s COVID-19 infections were reported in the past two weeks, after 121 inmates were transferred there in late May from the California Institution for Men in Chino.
“They should not have been transferred,” Newsom said in his public speech.
The governor described fighting the outbreak in the state prison system as “a priority for our administration.” He said he hoped San Quentin could reduce its inmate count from more than 4,000 on March 1 to 3,082 in the coming weeks.
“We don’t want to just send people to park benches and homeless shelters,” Newsom said. “We have to make sure we take people out responsibly.”
On Monday, the federal court-appointed recipient who oversees health care in state jails announced the removal of Dr. R. Steven Tharratt as state medical director of the prison system. Tharratt will now serve as a special health care advisor to the recipient.
Statewide, at least 28 inmates have died from COVID-related illnesses. More than 2,400 are currently infected.
“We are in unprecedented times as we grapple with the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic,” recipient J. Clark Kelso said in a statement. “In order to meet current response needs and at the same time work for a greater delegation of health care back to state control, it has become apparent that a reorganization is necessary for long-term sustainability.”
Last week, Assemblyman Marc Levine (D-San Rafael) called for the removal of Kelso and described the displacement of inmates without contemporary evidence as “the worst prison health disaster in state history.”
In late May, corrections officials announced that nearly 700 vulnerable inmates at Chino Prison would be transferred to a dozen other correction facilities across the state. At that time, Chino Prison had reported more than 600 COVID-19 cases and nine deaths among its inmates, who are in nearby rooms in shared housing.
The inmates to be transferred had been negative for COVID-19 but had a medical history that would make them especially vulnerable to infection.
The transfers eased the outbreak in Chino, which on Monday reported 119 active cases and a total of 16 deaths. But the virus spread to other places, hitting San Quentin, the oldest prison in California, especially hard.
San Quentin now has 1,381 infected inmates, including 920 new cases in the past 14 days, according to tracker COVID-19 from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
The positive cases translate to more than a third of the prison’s inmate population of approximately 3,450, which includes 721 death row inmates.
Last week, Marin County reported that Richard Stitely, 71, a death row inmate found dead in his cell on June 24, had tested positive for COVID-19. On Friday, the department announced the deaths of death row inmates Scott Thomas Erskine, 57, and Manuel Machado Álvarez, 59, followed the next day by Dewayne Michael Carey, 59. Authorities have yet to identify two more inmates who died Sunday.
They all died in an outside hospital “from what appear to be COVID-19-related complications,” the department said. Local hospitals have been inundated with intensive care patients from the prison, Marin County officials said last week.
Times staff writers Phil Willon and Stuart Leavenworth contributed to this report.
