Coronavirus from Wikimedia Commons
April 2, 2020: In a crowded, impoverished refugee camp in Greece, one refugee tested positive for Covid-19. The camp immediately tested her 60 contacts, and found 20 more positives, none of whom were showing symptoms. Then they began testing the rest of the camp’s 2,700 refugees, while imposing a 14-day quarantine and lockdown.
In Minnesota’s Moose Lake prison, an inmate tested positive for Covid-19 on March 30. Then two more. On April 2, the fourth prisoner tested positive for Covid-19. All four are in the prison in Moose Lake. So is the second Minnesota Department of Corrections staff member to test positive for Covid-19. (The first was in Red Wing.) The Moose Lake prison is on lockdown, sort of, though correctional officers come in and out daily. When the fourth prisoner was taken out of his cell, the guards gave his cellmate a mask. They did not test him for Covid-19.
Only 7 of more than one thousand inmates at Moose Lake have been tested for Covid 19. Only 31 of more than 9,000 Minnesota prison inmates have been tested for Covid 19. The Minnesota Department of Corrections website lists no plans to test all of the 1046 inmates at Moose Lake for Covid-19.
Mary Turck
News Day 