This story was told by a person incarcerated at New Folsom.
Caller: Once, because everybody – everybody in prison has to be in their cell at 4:00 every day for institutional count statewide. So I notice he didn’t come back at count time, so I’m asking the CO that’s doing count, “Where’s my celly?” “Oh, he didn’t come back?” I said, “No.” “We don’t know who,” so I said, “Okay” I just waited.
So he didn’t come back the whole night. So the next day come I asked you know CO, “Hey what’s,” you know, “What’s going on with my celly,” you know, and he was like “Oh, he’s in a CTC.” I say “CTC, for what?” He was like, “I don’t know. They ran some blood tests” and whatnot and they, you know, “Something’s going on with him.
So he’s, he’s in CTC, he’s in, what they call it, an outpatient unit or something like that. And, you know, so I was kind of worried so, you know, day after day was going by. So I finally got, you know, some information ’cause I saw another nurse that I knew, and you know, kind of was inquiring, you know, about my cellmate. And she was like, “Oh, he’s in CTC. He had COVID symptoms, and they ran some tests.”
And you know, he had, I guess, COVID symptoms I don’t know if he had what they say he had actual COVID or he was having COVID symptoms. So I said, “COVID,” so I was like, “Wow,” and then I noticed, and I kind of believed in what they were saying because he got visits his family used to come and see him and visits or whatnot. So I kind of configured he probably caught it that way.
Plus he, he used to go to group and things like that. So he could have caught it from the staff member. So I said, “You know what, let me” I didn’t have any symptoms or anything. I didn’t have I wasn’t feeling any symptoms.
So I said, “Wow,” so I said, “Well, let me, you know, get a COVID swab and all that. Let me get checked out.” Just in case, you know, something might be wrong with me ’cause I wasn’t feeling any symptoms and come to find out I had COVID. And but they said that, but I asked them, I said, “Well, what, why I wasn’t feeling, having any symptoms.”
And they was like, “Well, sometimes you don’t feel any symptoms from the beginning, but, you know, sometimes after a while, you start feeling symptoms.” So they quarantine me. So then there’s a special unit on the way on the other side, of the yard is a special unit building where they put all people who, who have COVID and they quarantine them. So they took me by force it wasn’t even like I didn’t even have an option.
