This story was told by a person incarcerated at Santa Rita Jail.
UCI: So, what has the COVID situation been like at your facility?
Caller: It was real hectic. It was like over 3,000 people was infected with COVID.
UCI: Oh, can you repeat that again? My bad.
Caller: Yeah, it was over 3,000 people were affected with COVID.
UCI: And how was the situation dealt with?
Caller: The situation wasn’t dealt good. It was – we’re in a dorm, dormitory. So people that were affected with it, instead of taking them out, they tried to isolate them by keeping them in a – in a section that they knew that it would spread throughout, since we’re in a dorm.
When a dorm is probably, like, 12-men dorms but in a section is over 120 people. So, they tried to just isolate, put them all in one section, but they knew interacting with each other, we would still end up having COVID, which most of us did.
UCI: And so how, in regards to that, how has the vaccination situation been like?
Caller: Dealing with the vaccination is, people are still skeptical. You only had a handful of people take it up to now. And still, the situation is, I would still say is not really good because even with them passing out, they’re supposed to pass out materials as far as wipes, far as lotion, cleaning supplies, anything far as shampoo.
They’re still not giving it to you regularly as they should. And since the vaccine, many people don’t wanna take it so it’s really not been effective.
UCI: In regards to that too, how – how are your feelings with guards bringing in COVID and all that? What are your thoughts?
Caller: That’s, that’s the biggest problem because we know that since being in prison that we’re isolated, that it’s coming from the outside. And many of us have done grievances over and over and, the grievances are – they’re redundant and rejected due to the fact that most of the guards don’t wear masks. They bring the mask in or they’ll wait for other, higher staff to come and then put their mask on.
And so that’s – that’s been the biggest problem because it can’t, like even with me, how they say I, how I got COVID was due to a staff, a nursing staff. But they wouldn’t tell me what nurse had it, but they just told me that one of the nurses had it and at that point they had to isolate me.
So that’s, that’s been one of the biggest problems that we’ve been writing grievances about. People from the outside, the staff, the correctional officers, they’re not using their PPE as they should but they will write us up if we don’t. So that’s, that’s been the biggest problem.
