This story was told by a person incarcerated at Calipatria.
UCI: OK. And what is the current COVID-19 situation at your facility?
Caller: Man it is crazy like we just, they just had a meeting today with the max, with the captain all type of stuff. We’ve been on quarantine for approximately since October, a little bit after November, when the spike really started occurring across all the prisons that I know about. And they were telling us, hey, if we test positive, basically they’re telling us in order to come off of quarantine we have to test positive.
You got people here that test negative like up to 10 times, have papers each time they tested negative and all that type of stuff. But they’re telling us based on that, they couldn’t kill it with the proper chemicals and stuff like that to contain it, it’s pretty much basically everybody catches it.
They’re not saying that that we, like they want us to catch it, but they’re implying that. They’re saying like the basic thing they could do is we have to fight fire with fire. And we’re like what does that even mean?
Like we’ve been quarantined for so long, we’ve been on this modified program, we get this pass like yard with all type of stuff. When you catch it, originally they would make you, they would move you to a different yard. And they would, at the same time they’re moving people out, they’re moving people in. So we were like, well we’re not gonna move no more, like what’s the point of moving? Because uh if you’re steady bringing people in, how are we supposed to stop catching it?
And they’re, and they’re bringing people back that have caught it already and sayin’ that they’re alright, they’re cool ‘cause once they catch it, you’re able, you’re able not to pass it and such and such. But at the same time they’re still leaving the other people here that can, that can catch it from the other COs and other inmates that they move into the building.
So it’s like a cycle of like you’re tryna force us all to catch it, and that’ll be it. It was a- it’s another situation that happened with somebody that ended up having it, but I can’t say that situation because personally ‘cause I feel like it will give up too much exact of my location. But it’s been a lot of stuff goin’ on with people.
