Health officials overseeing medical care in the Santa Clara County jail system say a record surge in COVID-19 cases this month, centered on the Elmwood men’s jail in Milpitas, got so bad that they couldn’t adequately quarantine people because they literally ran out of space.
They wrote in a memo last week to county law enforcement, prosecutors and public defenders that quarantine periods were reduced from 14 days to 10 days in response to the surge, which saw 202 in-custody infections since the beginning of November. That’s more than a quarter of all the South Bay jail infections recorded since the start of the pandemic.
“There is not cell space to move (inmates) out of dormitory housing, and so they remain in their dormitory housing and cannot be quarantined,” the memo reads. “If they cannot be be quarantined they may spread COVID-19 to each other over the coming days and weeks.”
The memo, which was obtained by this news organization, added that infected people in jail custody had to be moved around more frequently because of the space problems, increasing exposure risks. One of the central recommendations by custody health and county health officials was to bring the daily jail census to below 2,000.
That would be a tall order, since the census as of Monday morning was 2,464 people, with 1,782 being held in Elmwood. That overall total has been part of a gradual uptick since law-enforcement leaders, prosecutors, public defenders, probation and pretrial officials negotiated amnesty and early-release measures to bring the census down from 3,200 to 2,100 in the first six months of the pandemic.
Over the past two weeks, similar but more modest efforts have led to a census decrease of about 100 people.
As of the middle of last week, five people who contracted COVID-19 in jail had to be hospitalized — four of them in intensive care, according to officials.
On Nov. 16, the jails recorded 159 active infections, the highest number since officials began tracking cases in the spring of 2020, and surpassing the sharp surge seen in January. On Nov. 12 alone, 35 new cases were reported, marking the second-highest one-day total.
One of the main differences between now and January is the availability of vaccines, though adherence among people in custody has been sluggish. Less than half of people who were infected during the current surge were vaccinated, even though officially, vaccines and booster shots — recently approved for all adults — are expected to be made available to people in county jail.
Some people whose symptoms have been severe enough to be taken to the jail infirmary to receive monoclonal antibody therapy, but that has not been the case for the vast majority of those infected. One person being held at Elmwood said in an interview that he and most of the other men who have contracted COVID-19 have gotten basic provisions to deal with their symptoms.
“All they give us is cough drops and Tylenol,” the person said in a phone interview with this news organization.
He and several other people being held in Elmwood also objected to a statement from the sheriff’s office that masks are being made available three times a week or upon request, saying he has had to use his same cloth mask for over a month. He also echoed complaints dating back to the start of the pandemic about going long stretches without clean laundry and getting few if any disinfectants and other cleaning provisions to maintain safe hygiene.
“They move us right into the cells of people who (previously) tested positive. We immediately went into an area infected with no resources,” he said. “No wonder people are getting sick.”
Furthermore, health officials stated in their memo that they fear domino effects on the bandwidth of staff given the surge and labor intensity of response like the monoclonal treatments.
“The number of positive and exposed cases have strained medical resources, and if not abated will impact the ability to deliver other care,” they wrote.
More details about the county’s response to the current jail COVID-19 surge are expected to be discussed at a special meeting Monday of the Community Correction and Law Enforcement Monitoring committee, which works alongside the county’s civilian law-enforcement auditor.
“I want to know what they’re doing to save these people’s lives,” said committee Chair Walter Wilson. “The place is like a petri dish, and it’s incumbent on all of us to have preventative measures. That’s what I want to come out of today’s meeting. We have an obligation to protect everyone’s life in the system.”
Check back later for updates to this story.
