MANSFIELD — Neither the Mansfield Correctional Institution nor the Richland Correctional Institution have become hotbeds for COVID-19, according to data from the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
The state prison system website, updated daily, on Sunday said two staff members and one imate at MANCI had tested positive for coronavirus.
An email to MANCI’s warden was not answered at the time of publication.
Six other inmates are being kept in isolation, which the website said separates sick people with a contagious disease from people who are not sick.
Most of the state’s prisons, including MANCI, list the entire prison population as in quarantine, which the state said separates and restricts the movement of people who were exposed, or potentially exposed to the virus.
No RiCI staff or inmates had tested positive for COVID-19 and no inmates were listed in isolation or quarantine.
That’s not the case at some Ohio prisons, including the Marion Correctional Institution and the Pickaway Correctional Institution.
According to the DRC website, 73 percent (1,828 inmates) of all inmates at Marion have tested positive for COVID-19.
On April 8, a 55-year-old Mansfield man, who worked as a corrections officer at the Marion Correctional Institution for more than two decades, died from COVID-19.
The state website said 109 staff members at the Marion prison have tested positive and Ohio National Guard members have replaced ill workers at the facility.
Five inmates at Pickaway had died from the virus and the state lists a sixth as probable for COVID-19. The DRC website said 384 inmates and 64 employees at the the southern Ohio prison have tested positive.
In a tweet on Sunday, the DRC said has done mass testing of all staff and inmates at the Marion and Pickaway prisons.
“Because we are testing everyone, including those who are not showing symptoms, we are getting positive test results on individuals who otherwise would never have been tested because they are asymptomatic,” the department tweeted.
Another 34 prisoners were hospitalized in the prison wing at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center in Columbus. A sixth inmate died at Franklin Medical Center in Columbus, which serves as the prison system’s primary hospital.
