Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day seventy one since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. Our main story. US prisons have been among the places hardest hit by COVID nineteen. It's hard to implement strict social distancing when you're forced into small, shared living quarters. Advocates for prisoners say prison administrators aren't doing enough to protect prison inmates and staff, and calls to release large numbers of non
violent offenders are mounting. But first, here's what happened today. More than seventy six million Americans put off getting medical care they needed in the past month, according to new US Census data. During the pandemic, the Census estimates that more than one third of the adult population delayed care. The virus is indirectly affecting our health in other ways too.
The new survey also found high rates of mental health problems, including reported symptoms of anxiety, in more than of the population. Health experts and medical providers are increasingly concerned about the long term consequences of the shutdowns. The US is pledging as much as one point to billion dollars to astra Zenica to help make the University of Oxford's COVID vaccine.
President Donald Trump, who has been widely criticized for his response to the pandemic, is pushing the country towards the front of the line for immunizations. The US has also backed projects at Johnson and Johnson, Moderna and Francis Sunofi, fueling concerns that other countries could fall behind. Finally, yet another grim milestone, coronavirus cases globally have reached five million. Over the past month. The number of infections worldwide has doubled.
The US accounts for almost a third of the cases, five times the number seen by Russia, the number two country on the list. Experts believe the actual count is higher than the official numbers. As COVID nineteen has proven difficult to detect and track and now our main story. Calls continue to mount for the release of inmates at risk of COVID nineteen infection as cases rise at correctional facilities across the country. So far, seventent of inmates have
tested positive for the coronavirus. According to the Bureau of Prisons, Oakdale Federal Correctional Complex, a low security prison about two hundred miles west of New Orleans is one of the federal prisons hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic. Jordan Gospel has more on what is being done to combat this brother of the disease in the prison population. On March n year old Anthony Cheek became the first known federal inmate in the United States to die from COVID nineteen.
He was eighteen years into a twenty year sentence for aggravated child molestation at least state prison in Georgia. Since Anthony's death, fifty six federal inmates at around one and thirty five correctional facilities across the country have died after contracting the coronavirus, and thousands more have become infected. The rapid spread of the coronavirus in US correctional facilities has exposed the risks of overcrowding, lack of access to hygiene,
and poor healthcare. The number of coronavirus in facts and the country's prisons and jails is rising at a rate far surpassing the US population at large. In April, Attorney General William Barr directed federal prison officials to speed the release of inmates at risk of contracting COVID nineteen. This directive under the CARES Act was aimed at addressing coronavirus
outbreaks in correctional facilities across the country. Bar directed the Bureau of Prisons dispete up transfers to home confinement for eligible inmates at three federal institutions hit hardest by the disease, Danbury in Connecticut, Elkton in Ohio, and Oakdale in Louisiana. To qualify, inmates must have completed at least half of their sentence to be eligible for home confinement. This doesn't mean an inmates sentence is nullified or their convictions are expunged.
Home confinement is merely the transfer of an inmate from inside a correctional facility to their house or that of a family member. Advocates argue that Bar's order doesn't go far enough. On April six, the a c l U filed a lawsuit in the hopes that at least inmates from the Federal Correctional complex in Oakdale, Louisiana, who are at a higher risk of contracting the coronavirus will be
allowed to complete their sentence at home. Oakdale has seen one of the worst COVID nineteen outbreaks of any correctional facility in the country. Judge Terry Dowdy of the U. S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana dismissed the case, saying he did not have the authority to mandate releases or home confinement. Despite the judge's ruling, the a c l U is still encouraging the Bureau of Prisons to move forward with releases from Oakdale. Amid the pandemic. There's
a nationwide movement to release large numbers of prisoners. Samuil Trivetti, a senior staff attorney with the a c l YOU, says critical reforms were needed before the spread of the coronavirus, but are now more urgent than ever. As of more than two million people were incarcerated in the US, the most out of any country in the world. The a c l U is one of numerous organizations putting pressure on prosecutors and law enforcement to reduce jail and prison
populations by not arresting people for low level offenses. They estimate that these efforts would save fifty nine thousand lives. At Oakdale, no inmates have been placed in home confinement in response to Bars memo, some inmates who were already scheduled to go home before the pandemic are still waiting to be transferred. So far, eight inmates at Oakdale have
died from the coronavirus. A Bureau of Prison spokesperson says that since the release of Bars memo on March, it is placed an additional one thousand, five hundred and seventy six inmates from across the country on home confinement to date. I spoke with Samil Trivetti, who says inmates and their loved ones have been receiving conflicting reports from BAR and the Bureau of Prisons, which is responsible for one hundred and forty six thousand inmates spread across one hundred and
twenty two facilities nationwide. Of your own prisons and up to the Interney General, have been releasing sort of changing sets of criteria UM, but unfortunately, most of those criteria are based on essentially fearmongering that, UM, they're gonna look at your your past history, they're gonna look at your They're gonna look at these UM risk assessment algorithms to decide whether you might be potentially dangerous when you're out
in the world. Um, what happens in the jay or prison cannot stay in a jail or prison, right, Um, you have prisoners coming in and out, you have guards coming in and out. It's impossible to hermetically feel a jail and just hope that if folks inside get COVID,
it won't get out to the larger community. Initially, inmates who are more at risk of contracting the coronavirus, like those who are older or have underlying medical conditions, were put on a list and moved into solitary confinement known in prisons as the shoe, in advance of the release home. It didn't matter how much of their prison term they
had served. The a c l U wants to increase the use of home confinement in an effort to reduce the inmate population and help prevent the spread of COVID nineteen. Samil says bars order doesn't establish concrete timelines and guidelines for facilities to release at risk inmates. Another problem with the order is that it uses criteria from before the pandemic, like prioritizing inmates in low and minimum security facilities to decide whether or not they can serve the remainder of
their sentence at home. By using this criteria, Samill says, the Bureau of Prisons is only going to review about eighty to one d inmates. I mean public ELSA experts roundly agree that we need to significantly significantly reduce the population inside so that the folks remaining can socially distanced.
Right So, in a prison of people releasing at most one and we're not even sure whether they're going to release all of those people, but even if they're released everybody they were reviewing, that would do nothing to increase social distancing or allow for the kind of hygienic protocols that we know are necessary and that we're all following out here. The Bureau of Prisons, which declined an interview request, says it began preparing for the coronavirus outbreak in January.
But those who have been at Oakdale tell another story. Brandon Leads was an inmate at Oakdale serving a fifteen month sentence for bank larceny, a first time non violent offense. He scheduled to complete his sentence on September twenty nine. He's one of the inmates who sued the prison with the A C. L U in hopes of being able to serve the remainder of his sentence at home. Although the lawsuit was unsuccessful, Brandon was granted a furlough and
transferred to home confinement on May eleven. He's now living with his girlfriend, our Shaun Thompson, in New Orleans. They'll be together until he's moved into a halfway house on July six. Brandon is one of the lucky ones. Only a few inmates at Oakdale have been improved for early release. Last month, the Louisiana Department of Corrections created a COVID nineteen furlow Review Panel to speed up the temporary release of inmates at risk of contracting the disease and other's
convicted of non violent offenses. The COVID nineteen furlow Review Panel will review cases on a rolling case by case basis until the state's governor determines the coronavirus is no longer a public health emergency. Still, it's hard to know the reasons some inmates are furloughed and others are not. There's no public data on this, so Brandon can only assume he was released from Oakdale because he was imprisoned on a non violent offense and suffers from diabetes and
acute pancreatitis, making him predisposed to respiratory illnesses. It's difficult to get accurate information on what's going on inside the prison system as it is let alone during a pandemic, but an email's Brandon sent while he was still incarcerated, he described a crisis that seems to be getting worse by the day. Brandon says although Oakdale inmates have access to soap and water, there are no other supplies to
sanitize their dorms. Alcohol based and sanitizer is illegal and most correctional facilities, including Oakdale, because according to the Bureau of Prisons, it is flammable and a safety hazard. But during the pandemic, the CDC recommended that correctional facilities relax restrictions on hand sanitizer. Louisiana is among the seventeen states that are maintaining their bands on alcohol based hand sanitizer. Scott Taylor with the Bureau of Prisons says Oakdale is
selling non alcohol hand sanitizer in the commissary. This goes against the CDC's recommendation of using sanitizer with at least six alcohol by volume. Though the Bureau of Prisons has set inmates at all of their facilities, including Oakdale, are now being quarantined and kept apart our. Joan Brandon's girlfriend says that's not what Brandon described when he was in prison, or what he says his fellow inmates are experiencing. Now. They're super close together, and I mean they've now had
to which they've done everywhere. They've closed the weight room, they closed the rooms where there are places for them to go and be a little bit further apart from each other. And they posted signs saying stay six ft apart, but they can't stay six ft apart of their beds aren't even six ft apart. So I just don't see how any of the protocol that they can put in
place would be effective in any way. Scott Taylor, a Bureau of Prison spokesperson, wrote in an email saying that in response to the coronavirus, inmates at all correctional facilities are limited in their movements within the buildings and only small numbers can gather in communal spaces at a time. Taylor added that those showing signs of the virus are not placed on any work details or work assignments. Samil Travetti says that hasn't been enough, at least not at Oakdale.
We have declarations from some of the men inside thing they hear people coughing all night. It is impossible to sally socially distanced inside of prison, and that's why now the only thing that will work is transferred to home confinement, um and reducing the population. Staff at Oakdale and other facilities reported they initially were only given gloves after the rise in COVID nineteen cases. The Bureau of Prisons also sent face masks to inmates and staff, and gowns for
employees to wear. Coming to work now also involves a health assessment and temperature reading by medical staff. There are reports from inmates, the a c l U, and the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents Federal Correctional officers of prison and jail staff, quitting due to fears of COVID nineteen infection. Samil says. Oakdale expanded testing for the
coronavirus last week, revealing dozens of new cases. According to some of the facilities and mates, Even if the Bureau of Prisons increases the number of staff and tries to isolate inmates on site. Some advocates believe it's too little, too late. That was Jordan gas Poore and that's our
show today. For coverage of the outbreak from one and twenty bureaus around the world, visit bloomberg dot com slash Coronavirus and if you like the show, please leave us a review and a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's the best way to help more listeners find our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily edition is produced by Toph for foreheads Jordan gas Poore, Magnus Hendrickson, and me Laura Carlson. Today's main story was reported by Jordan gas Poure. Original
music by Leo Sidrin. Our editors are Francesco Levi and Rick Shawn. Francesco Levi is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening, h