We’ve had quite a few people ask us about how we are planning for the possible spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) in the Ada County Jail, which is the biggest jail facility in Idaho.
The short answer is we have plans in place for both the detection of COVID-19 cases as inmates come into our jail and what steps we would take if inmates get the virus inside the facility.
The Ada County Jail has a fully functional Health Services Unit, with registered nurses on staff 24/7. That includes booking, where each inmate coming in gets a health assessment before entering the main jail.
If an inmate comes into the jail with flu-like symptoms (including fever, cough, and shortness of breath) and tells us they may have the Coronavirus or have recently visited mainland China, Iran, Italy, Japan, or South Korea, they will be immediately given a mask and placed into one of our holding rooms in booking, which have negative pressure. (That basically means a room where air is not pumped in but is filtered and then sucked out).
The booking nurse will then complete a medical assessment. If the patient has a temperature of over 100.4 degrees and shows symptoms of respiratory illness (including cough and/or shortness of breath), the nurse will contact our on-call medical provider and Central District Health to determine the best course of action, which would include testing as soon as possible.
If an inmate has a history of recent travel to China but is not showing any symptoms, they will likely be placed in one of the secure negative pressure rooms in our Health Services Unit and checked for a fever every day for the next two weeks before deciding where else to house them in the Jail. If that inmate were to have a fever at or in excess of 100.4, the nurse will call our on-call medical provider and Central District Health to determine the next steps.
If an inmate in one of our dorms or other areas of the jail other than booking starts to show symptoms, our medical staff would repeat the same process.
If we were to have multiple cases inside the jail at the same time and no availability of hospital beds in the community, we have plans to designate certain areas as a quarantine zones, with different zones for inmates with high risk factors, like those with chronic illness, are elderly, pregnant, or have a compromised immune system.
At this point, we have not had an inmate who has presented the symptoms to begin the process.
Our jail staff and Court Services Bureau will work closely with the 4th District Court officials on the possible expansion of alternative sentencing and pretrial release programs, depending on how pervasive COVID-19 becomes if we have cases in the Ada County Jail.
Our jail medical staff and detention deputies have access to personal protective equipment (PPE) – including masks, gloves, eye protection — if they need to interact with an inmate who we know has COVID-19.
We have a decision matrix on how to monitor employees who may have been exposed to someone with COVID-19, based on several factors, like if the employee was wearing PPE or not or how close they got to the infected person, where we would determine if we needed to send that employee home for a 14-day evaluation or have them stay at work.
We also have worst-case scenario plans on how our jail staff could operate with staff reductions up to 40% at any time.
Our Jail command staff continues to stress to our employees to need to practice good hygiene, which means helping stop the spread of germs by washing hands frequently; avoiding touching your face when at work or out in public; covering up coughs and sneezing if you are sick; and keeping their work areas clean and sanitary – including frequent cleaning of high-use hard surfaces like telephone handsets, key pads, monitors, and computer keypads.
We are also considering limiting public access to the jail, including restrictions on tours, non-essential vendors, and students as a preventative measure.
We realize this is an uncertain time for our community, since we really don’t know what will happen with COVID-19. We also realize the jail presents unique issues in the case of a viral outbreak.
We have been paying close attention to what is going on and continue to refine our plans on how to best manage whatever happens.
If you want to keep up with the most current Idaho-specific information on COVID-19, check out https://coronavirus.idaho.gov.