This story was told by a person incarcerated at Chino.
Caller: One of the buildings, they started making room at one of the floors so they could bring in the people from the other yards that were considered positives.
And so, they could isolate more in the cell. It’s basically rooms. So, they won’t be in an open setting as a dorm. So, they were bringing people from other yards into our yard. And by doing that up I believe that’s how it basically started spreading here. And then also the staff, you know. Sure.
So, few of them started testing and then basically it just kind of got crazy a little bit. We went through a first wave at probably the end of April and May. So, then we start getting the short wave. But then a few months ago, like about two months ago, I think September, we experienced another wave.
Where each building holds 100 people per floor than one of our dormitories that I was in at least, like 85 percent in each floor that got COVID positive. They tested out everybody cause they were doing like random testing at first but everywhere they were testing started coming out positive.
So, yeah, I’m sure I missed a few things in between. Like in March, going back to March, they stopped all the visitings too. So, everything was just over the phone, and stuff like that. So, it got kind of crazy.
Before they did that, I believe it started getting a little bit out of hand here, so they tested everybody. The people, from what I heard, the people that tested negative, they started shipping them out. They shipped out I believe 120-something people over to San Quentin from this facility.
UCI: Do you remember when that was when they started moving people to San Quentin?
Caller: I think it might have been like in October. I believe. I don’t recall. I have a journal, that I could go back and look. But they started shipping a bunch of people supposedly to prevent them from getting contaminated, but the bad part is they did a test.
They tested everybody, and then they waited like two and a half weeks after the test. And then all the people that had come out negative are the ones who got shipped out, but they never really isolated everybody. They didn’t do a full lockdown.
So, everybody that got tested negative, at the time, you know, they were still interacting with the ones that were positive or with everybody. And so, that’s what I believe. The news came out quite a bit about San Quentin that they got contaminated, that was because of the people that they took from here, because that facility didn’t have any positives at the time.
And by bringing the people that were from here that they’re already tested positive, I mean, they had tested negative, but they were already infected. And they took the infection over there and they got crazy but being that they’re in Sacramento they got more publicity than we did.
But we were quite a few people. I think we were a lot higher than any other prison in the state from what I believe. But anyway. So, I jumped around a little bit, but that’s basically about it. Is there any other particular questions you guys have and wanted to ask?
UCI: Sure. So, what do you think would make the situation at your facility better?
Caller: Well, it’s getting better now. Like I said, they implemented a lot of things, but it was a big learning curve for them, I believe. Even their health services director got replaced because of the whole, anyways, yeah, that’s recorded on our site.
And I mean, they’re doing a lot of things, but I think they could have done a little bit more as far as locking everybody down completely. I don’t think they had good coordination between custody staff and medical, because from what we would hear it’s like, medical wanted one thing and then custody wanted something else.
And basically, they would test somebody, like I said, in this facility we have cells. And there’s two people per cell, they tested everybody. If one person became infected they would take them and move them over to that isolation ward that they created when they emptied out one of the buildings and, but they left the other person in the cell without quarantine.
And that’s something that we didn’t really understand. So, we kind of ask the inmate themselves to do a self-quarantine, which most of them did but not everybody. So, I mean they were allowed to move around and it’s like if they were in a cell with somebody that came up positive, I’m sure that they could hide it.
They just haven’t shown any symptoms or shown that they were positive also. But anyways, as far as what they’re doing, I mean, now I think they’re doing a lot better. But it still doesn’t make sense sometimes because, ’cause like now what they did they put a bunch of us in the gym, in a dormitory type of setting.
I guess to make room for the isolation ward, which makes sense, but, you know, it’s just, who knows, cause it doesn’t sound like even the people outside know exactly what’s going on.
