This letter was written by a person incarcerated at Chowchilla.
I’m not going to lie, things have been rough and very unorganized. We went to a few positive cases to over 500 positive cases in the course of two weeks. There is no way for us to be socially distanced, due to living in eight-man cells. The room I’m currently in had six girls, but two have tested positive. So now its four.
My roommate wears her mask all the time and washes her hand, yet still caught COVID. They only allow us to program for 45 minutes and we can only program with other “quarantined” rooms. “Quarantine” rooms are rooms where someone has tested positive. Once you test positive they tell you to pack your belongings but still take an hour to move you out the room.
Anyways, so my roommate was not feeling good but it was just a runny nose. So she thought it was allergies, the 3rd day she couldn’t taste or smell so we informed the cops. They told the nurses, but it took them almost an hour to have her step out the room to test her. All the while she was in the room further exposing us.
Anyways, so she left and ended up testing positive. When an inmate test positive they move you to 501 or 502 where there are other positive inmates. So we cleaned the room with our own soap. One week later, another roommate test positive. She was showing no signs.
