MARION — The county’s leading health official is prompting the Marion neighborhood to be vigilant, as an outbreak of the unique coronavirus at a Marion prison spills into the public.

More than 80%of Marion Correctional Organization’s prison population has actually checked positive for COVID-19, the illness brought on by the coronavirus, in addition to more than 160 corrections officers and other staff who live in Marion and surrounding counties, according to the Ohio Department of Rehab and Correction.

There might be a lot more MCI detainees who have the infection. A prison representative previously said the mass screening of the jail population was completed more than a week ago, on Friday spokesperson JoEllen Smith said only 2,300 tests had actually been administered at the Marion jail.

She did not clarify whether that included personnel, in addition to inmates. There are about 2,500 prisoners at the Marion prison.

Even without counting the prisoners who have actually evaluated favorable, Marion County still has a greater case count per capita than almost every other county in Ohio, consisting of big counties like Franklin and Cuyahoga, according to Ohio Department of Health information.

Marion Public Health has actually counted a minimum of 112 cases of “community spread,” or ones in Marion County locals who are members of the public, consisting of about 66 connected to the prisons break out, Marion Public Health Commissioner Traci Kinsler said Friday.

The Majority Of the 66 are staff members at Marion Correctional Institution, Kinsler said.

Similarly sized counties have far less cases, with Sandusky County (population 60,944) with 20 cases, Washington County (61,778) with 80 cases, Lawrence County (62,450) with 22 cases and Jefferson County (69,709) with 33.

” It’s going to take us a while to see the real impact of the (prison) break out,” Kinsler stated. “We just have to be actually alert about watching what this is going to do and is it going to trigger another break out.”

The worry is that a person of the corrections workers’ close contacts– a partner or another member of the family– might end up being infected with the virus and then spread it to individuals where they work and trigger an outbreak.

” Do they have a partner that works at a retirement home, at Whirlpool or at Silver Line … and could that activate something else?” Kinsler said.

Public health employees have been working to talk to corrections workers who have actually evaluated favorable for the infection about their close contacts to identify who else has been exposed to the infection in the hopes of heading off another break out in the county.

Kinsler indicated the jail outbreak as the reason for Marion County’s high case count per capita.

If you exclude Marion’s infected prisoners, the only counties with a greater case count per capita than Marion are Columbiana, Lucas, Mahoning and Pickaway. If you factor out the prison inmates in Pickaway County, its case count per capita is lower than Marion’s.

Columbiana County is the house of Ohio’s sole federal jail that is also experiencing a big outbreak of COVID-19 cases amongst its prison population and most likely has a lower case count per capita if the prisoners are factored out.

Detainee rights supporters state the prison break out doesn’t stop at the jail doors. It impacts the corrections officers and by extension, the communities they live in.

” They’re going to be equally exposed and equally susceptible and susceptible to that spread, and after that they head out. They go home, they go shopping,” said Piet van Lier, a researcher at Policy Matters Ohio, a progressive think tank. “That’s how it spreads.”

Van Lier and other supporters have actually pushed for a reduction in the Ohio prison population, whether that implies putting some prisoners on home arrest, moving them to other centers or launching them early, to help avoid the virus from spreading out through the jail population and into communities.

” We need to be truly mindful as we move forward particularly because our numbers are so much higher than our surrounding counties,” Kinsler said.

Even if you don’t know somebody who works in the prison, she stated, individuals need to be careful because the virus is here in the community and can spread even when a contaminated individual isn’t revealing symptoms.

” One of my biggest worries is not individuals going to the grocery store,” Kinsler said. “It’s as soon as you get home and sensation like you’re all well adequate and you can have a family party or party, and someone’s asymptomatic, and it causes the whole group to come down with the infection.”

svolpenhei@gannett.com

740-375-5155

Tweet me @SarahVolp

Check Out or Share this story: https://www.marionstar.com/story/news/local/2020/04/25/ marion-prison-ohio-coronavirus-outbreak-seeping-into-larger-community/3026133001/