MARTINEZ — Contra Costa Health Services is responding to a COVID-19 outbreak in the county jail system that includes 96 positive tests of inmates and staff members, officials confirmed Friday.
The 96 positive tests were split between the county’s three jail facilities in Martinez, Richmond and unincorporated Clayton, according to an email from a CCHS spokesperson. Thus far, no one has been hospitalized.
“The county’s detention system follows COVID safety protocols including quarantining inmates when they arrive or are transferred to a different facility and, since December 2020, offering voluntary COVID-19 vaccinations to all inmates and staff members,” the CCHS email says. “All staff working in county jail facilities are tested for COVID-19 regularly.”
Asked about the outbreak, a Contra Costa Sheriff’s spokesman said in an email simply, “we have no comment,” and referred questions to CCHS.
News of the outbreak comes as COVID-19 cases continue to spike locally and nationally, with more than 10,000 new cases reported in California on Thursday. Most are believed to be the highly contagious Delta variant.
There are also indications that the jail outbreak has had an impact on the county’s superior court system as well. On Wednesday, Contra Costa Presiding Judge Rebecca Hardie sent an email to both the District Attorney and Public Defender offices warning that “individuals” who recently appeared in four county courtrooms have since tested positive for the virus.
Hardie’s email says Department 35 and Department 290 — both in the AF Bray Courthouse in Martinez — were affected, along with Departments 10 and 12 in the Pittsburg courthouse. Hardie’s email contains no identifying information about who the individuals are but at least one was a Martinez Detention Facility inmate who had a court date, forcing a trial to be postponed, according to multiple attorneys with firsthand knowledge.
“I have no information to suggest anyone from (the DA or public defender) offices had ‘close contact,’” Hardie’s email says.
Last year, concerns over COVID-19 outbreaks at several county jails, including Santa Rita Jail in Alameda County, led to a policy of $0 bail for numerous penal code violations in an effort to keep jail populations relatively little. In the state prison system — where inmates are held in comparably close conditions — 232 have died of COVID-19, almost all incarcerated people.
