This story was told by a person incarcerated at Avenal.
UCI: How is the current COVID situation going on at Avenal right now?
Caller: Uh, it’s pretty, it’s pretty bad. Majority of everybody in here, positive, tested positive, people who were negative. But even those negative people are still housed around all the people who came out positive, so you can be sure that all these guys, all the negative guys are coming out positive.
UCI: Yeah, that’s not–that doesn’t sound good. Has the–Has the facility done anything to help stop the spread of COVID?
Caller: Oh, no. They make it look good on paper for–They make things look good on paper for Sacramento. You know, so they can keep getting the funding and all that good stuff, hazardous pay, but nah, it’s the same, the same stuff.
UCI: So when did the virus start to spread in Avenal? Like about what month?
Caller: Uh, I wanna say, early March. Like early March.
UCI: So once it started spreading, it just like kind of exploded and a lot of people got infected at once?
Caller: Yeah, uh, yeah. They stopped visiting, uh, I wanna say late February. And uh, early March, they began testing people, and–somewhere around there, March, April. They started testing people and everybody just–majority of people tested positive. I don’t know. Almost everybody was asymptomatic. Few people died, few inmates died, but um. They’re just dealing with the whole situation wrong.
