State to expand virus testing at Cummins lockup

Arkansas Health Secretary Nate Smith said during Wednesday’s briefing that officials had decided “to go ahead and test additional barracks” at the Cummins Unit. A Health Department spokeswoman said later that about 250 more inmates in a bloc where the virus was not previously thought to have spread will be tested.
(Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/Thomas Metthe)
Arkansas Health Secretary Nate Smith said during Wednesday’s briefing that officials had decided “to go ahead and test additional barracks” at the Cummins Unit. A Health Department spokeswoman said later that about 250 more inmates in a bloc where the virus was not previously thought to have spread will be tested. (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/Thomas Metthe)

State health officials announced Wednesday that they were expanding coronavirus testing at a prison, a day after declaring that they had concluded testing inmates at the 1,800-bed facility to determine the severity of the outbreak there.

Health Secretary Nate Smith said Wednesday that the latest numbers available to the Health Department show that 681 inmates and 14 staff members at the Cummins Unit in rural Lincoln County have tested positive for the virus.

The outbreak at the prison, a little more than a week old, has prompted the Health Department to seek assistance from a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital and private labs to rapidly test more than 1,000 prisoners at the unit. Inmates who test positive are being quarantined at the prison.

On Tuesday, Smith said during the governor's daily news briefing that officials had completed that testing and were awaiting the final results. The department had decided to forgo testing in some areas of the prison, Smith said, after determining that inmates there had no symptoms and had not interacted with other areas where the outbreak was occurring.

[CORONAVIRUS: Click here for our complete coverage » arkansasonline.com/coronavirus]

At Wednesday's briefing, however, Smith said additional testing was needed.

"Based on some of the testing that we have received, we have decided together with the Cummins Unit to go ahead and test additional barracks," Smith said.

Asked for an explanation of the change, a spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections deferred comment to the Health Department.

Meg Mirivel, a spokeswoman with the Health Department, said Wednesday that the new tests were ordered after an inmate tested positive in the prison's South Hall where the virus had not been previously thought to have spread. She said about 250 inmates in that hall will now be tested.

Another area of the prison that has not been widely tested, the Modular Unit, will not receive additional tests at this time, Mirivel said.

The Modular Unit is a separate facility that is detached from the main campus of the Cummins Unit. It housed 279 men as of Tuesday.

The Cummins Unit is the only state prison where the virus has been detected in the inmate population as of Wednesday.

Overall, the state's prison system houses more than 16,000 inmates.

Outbreaks have also been reported at the federal corrections complex in Forrest City and a community corrections facility in Little Rock.

Metro on 04/23/2020

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