Almost all inmates in Alaska’s largest prison hired Covid-19, as prisons across the country reached their highest level of positive cases this month.
A spokeswoman for the state’s correction department, Sarah Gallagher, told the Anchorage Daily News that about 1,115 prisoners out of a total of 1,236 prisoners at the Goose Creek correctional center tested positive.
The correctional center near Anchorage reported its first case of Covid-19 in November. On Monday, 112 cases were considered active, Gallagher said. More than 40% of the state’s total prison population contracted the disease and five prisoners died across the state.
Prisons are one of the environments most at risk for the spread of infectious diseases because prisoners cannot socially distance themselves and depend on the prison for their health and safety.
In mid-December, new cases in prisons reached their highest level since testing began in the spring, according to the Associated Press and the Marshall Project. Their data also showed that one in five state and federal prisoners in the U.S. tested positive for Covid-19.
Of the more than 275,000 infected prisoners, more than 1,700 died. The total number of cases is likely to be higher because not all prisoners have been tested. Prison officials were also disproportionately affected by Covid-19.
The United States is home to 22% of the world’s prison population and public health experts are calling for the release of older, medically fragile prisoners, people who are near the end of their sentence and low-risk individuals. Defenders also called for the release of those incarcerated because they cannot pay bail in cash, a payment to the court required to get out of prison pending a hearing.
The launches have been slow, however. In the first three months of the pandemic, more than 10,000 federal prisoners requested compassionate release, but only 156 requests were approved, according to Project AP and Marshall.