COVID-19 cases at Bledsoe County prison soar to 583

As Tennessee prison inmates' COVID-19 test results come in, the number of confirmed cases in Tuesday's tally soared to 583 at the 2,539-bed Bledsoe County Correctional Complex in Pikeville, Tennessee.

That number landed the prison the dubious ranking of No. 2 on The New York Times' list of coronavirus "hot spots" across the U.S.

The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Bledsoe County, counting the infected prisoners, is 588, according to the Tennessee Department of Health. That difference shows few county residents outside the prison have been confirmed with coronavirus.

Tennessee Department of Correction data shows the most recent total of confirmed cases among inmates is more than 25% of the Bledsoe prison's inmates who have undergone testing, and about 23% of the prison's entire population.

Results from 36 Bledsoe inmate tests are pending. according to TDOC. If result percentages hold true for the remaining tests, another nine or 10 positives could be expected.

TDOC chief medical director Dr. Kenneth Williams said Tuesday there have been no COVID-19-related deaths among inmates, and no inmates confirmed with the coronavirus so far have been placed on ventilators, although two inmates did end up in a hospital ICU.

Of eight inmates across the state who have been hospitalized for COVID-19, the two who were treated in the ICU have since recovered and been returned to their originating facility, Williams said.

And while Williams couldn't say where those two inmates came from, he was able to say they didn't come from Bledsoe. He also noted that two of the eight hospitalized were originally sent to the hospital for other issues and were diagnosed with the coronavirus while they were there.

"The numbers are high in the general population simply because the virus is just everywhere," Dr. Williams said of rising confirmations. "It's everywhere in the world, it's everywhere in the United States and everywhere in the state of Tennessee."

Williams said prison officials - along with the rest of the world, medical or otherwise - are in the middle of a learning process as they battle the virus.

"We are learning that there are a number of individuals that are walking around, and they have absolutely no symptoms whatsoever. They don't feel sick, they don't have a cough, they don't have a fever and that makes it very easy for it to move from one person to the next," he said. "That's why it's moving so readily through the population."

Williams said it was fair to conclude that proximity among inmates creates a situation in which the virus can spread very easily.

"You have to be concerned when you are within 6 feet of an individual, so it's a learning process for everyone, not just for our inmate population," he said. "It's not intuitive for the way we all have lived our lives, historically. We are very communal individuals. We are usually within six feet of someone else and for someone to suggest to us that we need to avoid that proximity, it's different."

Williams said Bledsoe wasn't necessarily a predictor for other Tennessee prisons.

"We just don't know" how confirmations will play out elsewhere, he said.

Williams also said the number of confirmed cases among prison employees now totals 38. He said he knew of one hospitalization and release, but he wasn't sure of totals for coronavirus hospitalizations among staff.

Because prisoners count in their resident counties, Bledsoe has the fourth-highest COVID-19 confirmed county case count in Tennessee and the New York Times' latest map and case count places Bledsoe County at the number two "hot-spot" slot in the U.S. in terms of confirmed cases as a percentage of 100,000 in population. That rate for Bledsoe County, which has a population of about 15,000, is 4,027 per 100,000.

A state prison tipped the scales for a small Arkansas county, too.

New York Times' data shows Lincoln County, Arkansas - home to the 1,876-bed Cummins Unit state prison farm - outstripped Bledsoe for the No. 1 spot with 754 confirmed cases, or a rate of 5,506 cases per 100,000. Lincoln County has a population of about 13,000.

Annette Haynes' boyfriend is incarcerated at the Bledsoe prison, and she is worried about coronavirus exposure and her boyfriend's history of past illness.

"I'm very concerned that he may get COVID-19," Haynes said by email. "He is in on drug charges and is a nonviolent offender."

She wants her boyfriend to be released to her custody.

"I would take full responsibility [for] him if they would release him on house arrest till this is all behind us," Haynes said.

"At least he would be alive," she said. "I think this is outrageous that they have no choice. They are human beings, too."

The American Civil Liberties Union believes COVID-19 outbreaks in prisons and jails pose a dire threat to the general public, and a reduction in inmate populations is possibly the only way to prevent deaths far in excess of estimates.

The failure to reduce populations could result in 100,000 additional deaths nationwide, according to a recent model studied by the ACLU in partnership with researchers from Washington State University, University of Pennsylvania and the University of Tennessee.

The ACLU's justice division director Udi Ofer and chief analytics officer Lucia Tian stated in an April 20 commentary that the Trump administration's prediction of "substantially under" 100,000 coronavirus deaths could be doubled by inmate deaths.

"Overcrowding, lack of access to hygiene and substandard health care make jails and prisons potential time bombs for any outbreak, let alone the deadly coronavirus," Ofer and Tian wrote in the commentary. "But what often gets lost in the discourse is the connection between incarceration facilities and the broader community. Correctional staff come to work every day and then return home."

Ofer and Tian's commentary states that the ACLU's recent study creates a first-of-its-kind epidemiological model that shows that as many as 200,000 people could die from COVID-19 - double the government estimate - if incarcerated people continue to be "ignored" in the nation's public health response.

"But we have the power to change this grim outcome," the commentary states. "We can save as many as 23,000 people in jail and 76,000 in the broader community if we stop arrests for all but the most serious offenses and double the rate of release for those already detained."

In the Chattanooga region in March, more than three dozen groups and individuals filed an emergency petition urging the Tennessee Supreme Court to take action to reduce the coronavirus threat in prisons and jails. By early April, most county jails in the region had made efforts to reduce populations and arrests, as well as temporarily halting visitation and in-person court appearances in many communities.

By mid-April in the prison system, 19 staffers and contract workers tested positive for the coronavirus, and the state began testing inmates soon after, including an additional 3,100 inmates at Bledsoe County, the Northwest Correctional Complex in Tiptonville and the Turney Center Industrial Complex in Only, which is located in Hickman County.

State prisons' problem landed in Chattanooga this week after a state inmate recently transferred from Bledsoe's prison to the Hamilton County Jail tested positive for COVID-19. Erlanger hospital officials notified the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office on Monday.

Meanwhile, there have been no inmate releases among state prisons for COVID-19 concerns and none are planned, according to TDOC's "frequently asked questions" page on its website.

TDOC on Tuesday announced plans for the fourth round of mass testing at a CoreCivic prison in Trousdale County, where several positive COVID-19 test results turned up at Trousdale Turner Correctional Center, according to a TDOC news release.

Statewide, 756 inmates at seven facilities have tested positive, the vast majority of whom are asymptomatic, according to the release.

Contact Ben Benton at bbenton@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6569. Follow him on Twitter @BenBenton or at www.facebook.com/benbenton1.