By Anita Miller
ke the Hays County Jail, COVID-19 has appeared in the privately-run Kyle Correctional Facility.
Jeremy Desel, director of communications for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, said the facility took measures in March to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. According to the TDCJ website, offenders and employees have tested positive. There are currently five active cases among offenders and two active cases among employees with five employees having recovered. Some 85 offenders have been placed on medical restriction and five on medical isolation.
Desel said anyone who is “symptomatic or potentially symptomatic” is taken to the medical unit, where they are “treated as if they have it.” When someone tests positive they are placed in medical isolation, which is “essentially lockdown” in a single cell, with anyone coming in contact required to wear full protection including a mask, gloves, gown and eye protection.
“Contract investigation” is conducted in the wake of any positive test and anyone who had contact with that person is placed on medical restriction.
Those offenders, Desel said, “are kept to their housing area, or dorm.”
Two temperature checks and symptom checks are don day and Desel said the “vast majority of our offenders and staff have all been tested” as part of a system wide program. The website said the virus has been found in 97 of the department’s 16 units, or 97%.
Visitors to the facility have not been allowed since march.
