The Polk County Jail on April 2, 2021. (Amanda Loman/Salem Reporter)
Three Marion County jail inmates and two employees have contracted Covid over the past month, making the jail the latest correctional facility to report an outbreak.
The Oregon Health Authority started investigating the jail outbreak on Sept. 5 and has recorded five total cases, according to its latest weekly outbreak report published Sept. 29.
Sgt. Jeremy Landers, public information officer for the Marion County Sheriff’s Office, said the sheriff’s office does not disclose vaccination rates among employees.
The Polk County Jail has also recently seen an outbreak which includes 18 cases. OHA began investigating on Aug. 20. Symptoms began for the most recent case on Sept. 6.
Polk County Sheriff Mark Garton said 15 of those with Covid were people in custody and three were jail staff. The total number of people with Covid has not changed since OHA’s Sept. 22 outbreak report.
Garton said the Covid outbreak was the first to happen at the jail.
He said nearly 85% of jail staff are vaccinated against Covid, and the rest have an exemption.
Correctional facilities have been hotspots for Covid in Oregon and across the U.S. To date, the state Department of Corrections has recorded 3,767 positive cases among adults in custody and 1,145 cases among staff, according to the department’s website.
Landers said after an outbreak at the Marion County Jail, staff notify anyone who may have been exposed. Employees who are exposed have to quarantine at home, and staff decide ways to quarantine people in custody inside the jail.
Garton said “dorms” in the Polk County Jail that held around 24 to 30 people before the pandemic now hold around 13. After the recent outbreak, employees who got Covid quarantined at home, and staff kept inmates who contracted it in one place without “moving people in and out,” he said. Jail staff have also worn masks since the pandemic first hit Oregon.
This post was updated after Salem Reporter received new numbers for Covid cases at the Polk County Jail.
-Ardeshir Tabrizian
