NASHVILLE, Tennessee (AP) – A Tennessee advisory committee tasked with deciding in what order residents should receive the COVID-19 vaccine recognized that state inmates were at high risk, but concluded that prioritizing them for inoculation could be a “public”. nightmare of relationships “.
The result: the prisoners are in the last group scheduled for vaccines in the state, although the group of stakeholders in pandemic vaccine planning concluded that “if not treated it will be a vector of general transmission of the population ”, according to the records of the closed-door meetings of the group obtained by The Associated Press. So far, there is no firm timetable for the deployment of vaccines in prisons.
The Tennessee debate reflects a question that states across the country face when launching life-saving vaccines: whether to prioritize a population seen by many at best as a later thought, separate from the public and, in the worst case, as undeserved. Resistance occurs even though medical experts have argued since the beginning of the pandemic that prisoners had an extremely high risk of infection, as they live in very close contact with each other and have little capacity for social distance.
“It shows a lack of morality and an absence of empathy to allow someone to die or to put them at greater risk because they happen to be imprisoned. … Before anyone was imprisoned, they were the son, the mother, the brother, someone’s father or sister, and they continue to be so and should be considered, cared for and seen as such, ”said Jeannie Alexander, executive director of the No Exceptions Prison Collective, a Nashville-based grassroots organization.
Just a few months ago, as COVID-19 cases spread to the United States, The Associated Press and The Marshall Project calculated cumulative infection rates among prison populations. The analysis found that by mid-December, 1 in 5 state and federal prisoners in the United States had tested positive for coronavirus, a rate more than four times higher than the general population. Cases have declined since then, but remain higher than the general population.
Tennessee ranks 24th in the nation for cases of COVID-19 inmates. So far, 1 in 3 of the state’s inmates (more than 38,800 in total) has tested positive for the virus since the outbreak began to spread nearly a year ago. More than 40 inmates have died from COVID-19.
So far, the state has inoculated an unknown number of correctional personnel (Tennessee does not disclose this information as other states do), but there are no prisoners. Twenty-four states have allowed at least a portion of their inmate population to be vaccinated, including those who qualified according to state age guidelines or had pre-existing health conditions, according to AP and Marshall Project data.
At times over the past year, some of the largest coronavirus groups in the United States have been in Tennessee prisons, with hundreds of cases active at various facilities.
During the spring, Trousdale Turner Correctional, a Tennessee-based private prison run by CoreCivic, saw about half of its 2,444 inmates test positive for coronavirus, while more than 1,100 inmates at the 1,700 South Central Correctional Center people contracted the virus. The state reported only 17 cases of positive inmates on Friday. The visit has been suspended for months. The state’s prison population is around 30,000, with local prisons numbering approximately 19,000.
The documents from the stakeholder group meetings for pandemic vaccine planning underlined, in fact, the importance of the general public seeing that inmates “are people” who should be treated as “part of the community” and “if left untreated will be a vector of general transmission of the population.” However, the documents concede that providing the vaccine to inmates would result in “many media inquiries”.
The group consists of approximately 40 public health agencies, legislators, health coalitions, emergency management and other organizations. Because he serves as an advisor, under Tennessee law, he is not required to meet publicly and there are no audio recordings of the meetings, according to the Department of Health. The PA obtained the minutes of the meeting through a public registration application.
According to the documents, the group met for the first time, practically, on September 22, before the vaccines were available. The Tennessee jailed population was introduced during this meeting, when the committee talked about populations that may have been ignored.
“We understand that it would be a (public relations) nightmare, but a possible responsibility to the state,” says a document that is not attributed to anyone by name.
Later in December, when the group met to discuss the rise of certain age groups, as well as teachers, inmates were reconsidered.
“If we get hit hard in prisons, it affects the whole community. The disease leaves the correctional facilities and returns to the general society while the inmates abandon their sentence, “says the document, which adds that when inmates have the disease” it is the taxpayers who must absorb the treatment bill. “.
Ultimately, correctional workers and inmates faced one of the first slots, along with first aid. Meanwhile, the inmates remained in the last eligible group. Even now, senior inmates who can obtain state age requirements are not yet vaccinated.
Tennessee currently ranks 47th among states in terms of the number of people it has vaccinated in the global population. Of the 7 million people in the state, more than 14% have received at least one dose of vaccine, while more than 7% have received both vaccines, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In recent weeks, the state has increased eligibility for the vaccine. Starting next week, the vaccine will be available to people 16 and older who have pre-existing conditions (such as cancer, hypertension, obesity and pregnancy), as well as caregivers and residents of homes where medically vulnerable children reside.