Tactics range from screening inmates for symptoms to barring them from touching visitors.
By David Hench
Portland Press Herald
CUMBERLAND COUNTY, Maine — Corrections officials are trying to limit chances for the swine flu to infect inmates in county jails, where the virus would likely spread quickly because of the close quarters.
Some jails are prohibiting inmates from touching visitors, while others are screening all incoming inmates to ensure they are not infected. The Cumberland County Jail has established a vacant pod in the jail as a potential quarantine area.
''Due to the nature of our inmate population, we often deal with communicable disease,’' said Cumberland County Sheriff Mark Dion. ''It’s not a new challenge. It has a different name this time.’'
Like many jails, Cumberland County’s has had outbreaks of staph infections and tuberculosis.
State corrections officials met with county officials Monday to assemble a team to make sure each facility’s response to the outbreak is appropriate and coordinated, said Denise Lord, associate commissioner of the Department of Corrections.
The group will work on issues such as transferring prisoners and ensuring adequate staffing for a facility if there is a serious outbreak, she said.
Jails are more vulnerable because they have many more people being booked on a daily basis than prisons, which receive only inmates who are sentenced to lengthy terms.
Jails and prisons do have advantages over other institutions, because administrators can maintain close controls over people’s movements.
''We want to try to prevent the spread’’ if inmates contract the illness, Lord said. ''Probably the best approach is to go into quarantine response: Isolate the people infected, treat them and minimize their contact with other people.’'
Androscoggin County has ended so-called contact visits for the time being, to prevent the spread of germs from people on the outside to people inside.
''It’s a precaution for the inmates more than anything else,’' said Sgt. Donald Olivier. ''All we need is one person to come in that has it, and it would be spread very quickly.’'
Some jails already ban contact visits because of problems with contraband, separating inmates from visitors with a glass partition.
The state hasn’t banned contact visits at the prisons, Lord said.
York County Sheriff Maurice Ouellette instituted a screening process for inmates last week, soon after Maine’s first cases of the H1N1 flu were reported.
''We now have an added form on all bookings that basically goes through series of questions pertinent for screening for influenza,’' Ouellette said. The questions ask about symptoms such as fever, headache and fatigue and whether someone has traveled outside the state or country and to where.
''If it’s something that can be spread from human to human, obviously the jail is an area where that could happen quickly because they’re all locked up under one roof,’' he said.
Dion said a high percentage of inmates have some kind of immune deficiency, whether it’s AIDS, hepatitis or chronic respiratory problems that make them vulnerable to the flu. Nurses already screen inmates who enter the jail for any health problems that could spread, he said.
The jail’s medical contractor was arranging to get access to anti-viral medications in case there is an outbreak.
If one person became sick, they would probably be placed in a negative-pressure room where air is kept from circulating to areas where there are other people. If more people got sick, the jail could use a vacant pod as a sick bay, Dion said.
Ouellette said his staff has been emphasizing frequent hand-washing and other prevention strategies to inmates.
''I have kind of a captive audience. Why not be safe rather than sorry?’' he said.
Copyright 2009 Portland Press-Herald