Coronavirus closes jails: 82 inmates test positive in Weber County, another 59 in Washington County

Eighty-two people incarcerated at the Weber County Jail have tested positive for the coronavirus, jail officials said Wednesday.

It is the largest outbreak yet in a Utah jail. Washington County jail officials also reported a large spread of COVID-19 cases in their jail on Wednesday, with 59 inmates with positive results so far, nearly 20% of the jail population.

Weber County Jail officials believe the virus first entered the jail after a Nevada federal prisoner was transferred to Weber County, but they noted that the community in the county has spread and is likely to have spread. not all of their cases originated from that prisoner.

Lt. Josh Marigoni said Tuesday that the federal inmate had a cough, but informed medical officials that it was a chronic cough due to a medical condition. He was placed in a receiving unit, not an isolation or quarantine unit. Four days later, the inmate asked to be seen by medical professionals because his cough had worsened.

He was then screened for COVID-19 and separated from the other inmates. Marigoni said Wednesday that they have examined 125 inmates so far, and that mass testing will continue. He said they will work with the courts in the coming days to review whether prisoners at increased risk of contracting the virus can be released early or otherwise serve their sentences.

In Washington County, Deputy Chief Jake Schultz said Wednesday that officials are not quite sure how COVID-19 entered his facility, but said his first cases came from the jail’s intake unit. Before the jailers realized that these prisoners had the virus, they had already been transferred to different housing units.

“It was like a domino effect,” he said.

Authorities at both facilities say they have been taking precautions to keep the virus out since March, giving prisoners additional soap and face masks. They have also worked to reduce their prison population.

“Our main goal was to keep him out,” said Shultz. “Once it entered, we move on to our main initiative now, which is to prevent it from spreading and containing it.”

Schultz said that only about a dozen inmates have shown symptoms of COVID-19, and one inmate was briefly hospitalized for respiratory problems.

Fourteen of the inmates who tested positive at the Washington County Jail have been sentenced to Utah State Prison, but are incarcerated in Washington County as part of a program to help alleviate overcrowding.

Corrections spokeswoman Kaitlin Feldsted said Wednesday that beyond hiring individual facilities and setting standards, prison officials do not supervise the county jails they send inmates to. She said she anticipates that those inmates in Washington County will remain there, and there are no plans to transfer them to a different facility.

The Utah State Prison has had three confirmed cases at its Draper facility.