7 News Belize

And, it's not only police and health workers - but - as we told you last week - prison guards have also been infected.

For months now there have been rumblings of a COVID outbreak at the Belize Central Prison.

And, it seemed an inevitability - with a large number of men and women confined to cramped spaces. Still, the prison had been doing a remarkable job of keeping the virus at bay. However. with the increasingly wide footprint of COVID-19, there was only so long they could remain an island isolated against infection.

This morning Cherisse Halsall headed to Hattieville to find out about the outbreak at the Belize Central Prison.

The Belize Central Prison, it's a fortress, a place from which thoughts of escape are mostly futile. But while Prisoners don't seem to get out, Covid-19 has managed to get in.

This morning we went behind prison walls to ask the Kolbe Foundation's C.E.O. about the prison's first brush with COVID 19, a small outbreak that's left 6 prison guards and 8 inmates infected with the virus.

Virgilio Murillo - C.E.O, Kolbe Foundation

"We did a hundred and 52 rapid tests, that was done amongst guards and inmates, and of that 152 rapid tests, 8 inmates only turned out as positive for COVID 19. That included one female inmate and 7 male inmates. We also did some PCR tests aside from the 30 that we had done initially. That 30 like I said yielded 4 and then we did 21 on Tuesday or Monday that is and that resulted in two more guards testing positive for COVID-19. We have done some more PCR tests a total of 54 which we have not received any results yet for, so we are still waiting for the results for those. But out of that 54, 45 was done on inmates and the remaining was done on guards."

The question now is, how much contact did those positive cases have with the rest of the prison population?

Virgilio Murillo

"We've quarantined everybody who needs to be quarantined and we're hoping that that is how it stays now the quarantining should take care of them and 14 days later they will go back and do a subsequent list that should clear them up. Whoever isn't cleared up by then. I imagine you'd have to push on with another 14 days quarantine. What we have done right now to those ones that are under quarantine they are being attended to by guards and obviously the guards are properly dressed in their PPE including a face shield and the Hazmat suit and what have you, gloves and everything are properly sanitized and sterilized on a regular basis."

Cherisse Halsall

"With the knowledge that there is, as I said, a small outbreak in the prison, what's the mood like here among inmates that may not yet be affected, infected. How are they feeling about the fact that the virus is nowhere among your population?"

Virgilio Murillo

"Well, like I've always maintained as long as you educate the prison population and the staff and you don't hide any information from them, your open with the information, you shouldn't be getting any resistance or rebellion if you want to call it that and that is what we have done all along we have been keeping them in the loop. What I want to mention here is that with the widespread of COVID-19 in the community it would be wishful thinking for anybody to think that it would not eventually reach the prison. In my mind it has always been just a matter of when. Right now the prisoners are still entitled to maintain telephone contact with their families, visits are still suspended and they will remain so, suspended until we start to see some kind of improvement in the broader community. It would be very risky to open up for visits, especially bearing in mind what is happening on the outside."

And while every precaution is being taken to mitigate the spread, personnel at the prison are almost operating blindly. Murillo says he is waiting patiently for the results of additional testing that will give a better idea of how many people might have contracted the highly contagious disease.

Virgilio Murillo

"I know that they are very overwhelmed with the amounts of testing that they're doing in the broader community, these tests like I said were done like two days ago and I was hoping that we would have gotten the last set yesterday and then probably the set they did yesterday, maybe tomorrow but it doesn't happen that way obviously. So we're just waiting and we'll see what happens with that, I am hopeful that maybe by the end of today we should get the results for those though and then I would be in a better position to say what are the results of those."