What happens if coronavirus hits Middle Georgia jails? Local officials are working to prepare
Officials who oversee some of Middle Georgia’s jails are taking what precautions they can to keep coronavirus from spreading to county lockups.
But they acknowledge there would be little they could do, aside from isolating those infected, if it does.
Some area jails, the larger ones in Bibb and Houston counties, are small cities behind bars. The Bibb lockup, which houses nearly 1,000 inmates, has a greater population than more than 200 towns in Georgia.
As the number of coronavirus cases rises in the state — as of Monday afternoon there were half a dozen or so known diagnoses, most in the Atlanta area — jailers are exercising diligence.
At the Houston jail in Perry, which has about 500 inmates, Maj. Alan Everidge, who oversees the jail, said the process of booking people has been changed in recent days.
Officials are now conducting more detailed screenings of incoming inmates in a space outside of the general booking area in a sally port. There the inmates are checked for signs of illness and asked whether they are suffering cold- or flu-like systems and whether they have been in contact with anyone who might be sick.
So far none of them has, but if they do they will likely be placed in isolation cells.
“We try to be prepared for anything,” Everidge said.
There were no known coronavirus cases at the Bibb jail either, Sheriff David Davis said.
The Macon lockup has experience dealing with influenza and other outbreaks, and the sheriff said staffers and inmates are being asked to be diligent about washing their hands.
In Putnam County, where the jail houses nearly 100 inmates, Sheriff Howard Sills said protocol for tending to those incarcerated won’t change much.
“The jailers all wear gloves and wash their hands now” as a matter of routine, the sheriff said.
Were there to be an outbreak, Sills said, “I don’t know what we’ll do. There’s virtually no way to keep in from spreading at the jails.”
Sills, a past president of the Georgia Sheriff’s Association, said county jails are, after hospitals, often the second-largest healthcare providers in their counties as inmates are provided with healthcare while locked up.
“I am more concerned with what I’m gonna have to do on the streets,” Sills said of a potential outbreak, “than I am in the jail.”
He wonders what happens if the cops, firefighters and other first-responders get sick.
“There is nobody to take our place,” he said.