This letter was written by a person incarcerated at Chowchilla.
1-1-21
UC Irvine,
I am writing you a quick brief information schedule on what is happening to us during this COVID-19 lockdown. So we are on quarantine lockdown. We are now wearing N95 masks ever since we got put on quarantine. We were wearing the cloth ones, but cloth ones are not allowed.
We have a day room schedule that we are allowed out of our rooms only four times out of a seven day week.
1. Day 1, no program
2. Day 2, 9 to 10:30 a.m.
3. Day 3, 1 to 3:30 p.m.
4. Day 4, no program
5. Day 5, no program
6. Day 2, 9 to 10:30
7. Day 3, 1 to 3:30 p.m.
This schedule is for chow only. That is a total of eight rooms and each room holds up to eight people.
Our housing staff/COs constantly remind us to wear our mask six feet apart. Each CO that comes and makes their COVID-announcement. Since we only have these five and half hours a week out in the day room, we utilize the phone kiosk, grab any forms we need.
We also have access to a counselor for issues that the CO do not deal with. Since we are a quarantine, the CO have to prepare our meals, serve them at breakfast with lunch and dinner. The cloth masks are not allowed anymore for both staff and inmates, we’re only wearing the N95 only. Most staff wear properly. There is a few that wear half-faced. But we see that we make sure to recommend them to mask up! Correctly.
We are pretty safe so far. We are pretty safe until a staff – state staff – bring it in and expose us. We have been lucky enough to only have two rooms to be exposed. We are only aware of they haven’t told us if your fellow housing inmates have not tested positive. They are not good on keeping us updated.
I’m sure it’s due to not making us wigg out about it, but I do feel that we don’t need more than one CO in here since we only program out of our rooms very few hours. The less the staff that come in, the better. It is very doable to run on with the staff provided.
I would like to have more information on the vaccine, which one is less risky, and if we are going to be able to have access to it like the flu shot every year. Are we going to take it every year or is it a one-time two-part shot? I would take the shot because I feel I would not survive if I don’t take it.
I don’t have any underlying health issues, I just believe wouldn’t survive. Well hope this is easy to understand and sheds some light on what you wanted.
