| 2 days ago, we told you about that Belizean immigrant in the US who tested positive for the Coronavirus, while he was being held in custody at the detention center in California. There is a consensus that prisons and detention centers are especially vulnerable to the spread of COVID-19. So, we asked the Prison CEO to discuss the protocols that they implemented at the Belize Central Prison to ensure the facility wouldn't become ground zero for a coronavirus second wave.
He told us today, that their quarantine procedures irritated many family members of the prison inmates and detainees, but that the prison authorities continue to strictly observe them up until this time. Here's how he explained why:
Virgilio Murrillo - CEO, Belize Central Prison
"Certainly, the masks - no amount of masks is short. We'll always be needing those. Hand-washing is a must because those are some of the preventative measures that we have in place at the prison currently. We have our screening process in place where you have to wash your hands. You're checked by the infrared thermometer to make sure that you're not displaying any unusual temperature. And certainly, we received two of those, by the way in this donation. So, that should just boost our capacities in terms of screening more at a time."
"Since the lockdown, the country's state of emergency, and since the prison has restricted visits and everything else to mitigate and prevent COVID from entering the prison, we have received 426 people into the prison. 12 children, 20 women, and I think the rest are adult males. Of those 426, just about everyone has definitely undergone some kind of isolations. Those ones that we had considered very high risks, we put them on a 21-day isolation. And the ones who were considered low-risk, we put them one a 14-day isolation. And we never negotiated with that. We had a lot of families calling. I can't see my son - but we had to do what we had to do as a prison. I think there was a case with an American, if I'm not mistaken, who, I think, was caught jumping the border somewhere up north. Well, we had quarantined him in an abundance of caution. After, we did his testing and everything, and [we] realized he was COVID-free, then we took him back out. But certainly, we never negotiated with the issue of isolation and quarantining, if we had to."
The CEO says today's donation goes a long way to make them better equipped to prevent COVID-19 from entering the prison - at no additional cost.
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