The first female federal prisoner to die after contracting the coronavirus was a 30-year-old mother who had just weeks earlier given birth while on a ventilator.
The woman, Andrea Circle Bear, of Eagle Butte, S.D., was sentenced in January to serve 26 months in prison for using a residence on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation to sell drugs in 2018. She admitted that she had sold $850 worth of methamphetamine to a buyer who was later revealed to be a confidential informant, according to court documents.
On March 20, Ms. Circle Bear was transferred from a jail in Winner, S.D., to Federal Medical Center Carswell, a prison that holds about 1,625 female prisoners in Fort Worth. She was immediately placed into quarantine, the federal Bureau of Prisons said in a statement, in line with the agency’s new policy to reduce the risk of inmates contracting the virus from a new arrival.
Because of concerns about her pregnancy, Ms. Circle Bear was admitted to a hospital about a week later, on March 28, but she was sent back to the prison later that day.
Three days later, Ms. Circle Bear developed a fever, a dry cough and more possible coronavirus symptoms, and was taken back to the hospital, where she was placed on a ventilator, a sign that she was struggling to breathe on her own. The next day, on April 1, her baby was born by cesarean section. The judge who sentenced Ms. Circle Bear had said in court documents that her baby was due in early May.
On April 4, three days after her baby’s birth, Ms. Circle Bear’s coronavirus test came back positive. She died on Tuesday, more than three weeks later.
The Bureau of Prisons said Ms. Circle Bear had a pre-existing medical condition that could worsen coronavirus symptoms. Her family and her former lawyer did not immediately return calls seeking comment, but advocates of prison reform questioned why she was being held in a prison in the first place.
“Not every prison death is avoidable, but Andrea Circle Bear’s certainly seems to have been — she simply should not have been in a federal prison under these circumstances,” Kevin Ring, president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, said in a statement. “Her death is a national disgrace, and I hope it is a wake-up call.”
The coronavirus has ravaged prisons across the United States, and eight of the nation’s 10 largest coronavirus clusters were in prisons or jails as of Wednesday evening, according to The New York Times’s tally of cases.
The Bureau of Prisons, which oversees the imprisonment of about 142,000 people, has reported that 1,534 inmates and 343 staff members have tested positive for the coronavirus, and that 31 inmates have died. But a vast majority of incarcerated people are held at state prisons and local jails. At least 12,000 inmates have tested positive in state prisons, and more than 150 people have died.
Senator Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, said in a statement that Ms. Circle Bear’s death showed the need for federal authorities to do more to keep prisoners from getting the coronavirus. Mr. Durbin and other lawmakers have urged officials at the Justice Department, which oversees the Bureau of Prisons, to allow some sick and older inmates to serve their terms in home confinement.
“Andrea Circle Bear committed a low-level nonviolent drug offense, but she did not deserve to die,” Mr. Durbin said, adding that her child did not deserve to lose a mother.
Vice News reported on Wednesday night that the president of the union for correctional officers at the Fort Worth prison had filed a whistle-blower complaint this month, in which she wrote that the medical center “knowingly and willingly misled the public,” placing inmates and staff members at risk.
The letter, addressed to Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, came just after Ms. Circle Bear tested positive, and it claimed that the Bureau of Prisons had provided “a false perception to the American people” about the steps it was taking to keep inmates and correctional officers safe.
Timothy Williams contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed research.
