This letter was written by a person incarcerated at Chino.
Personally, I fear another mass positive tests. I think there was approximately close to 550 inmates on the yard that tested positive. Only approximately 30 to 50 inmates stayed negative on this yard. Of course the only way the virus gets to us is by staff.
We can’t come up with it within a closed public environment. No visits, no religious service, no self help groups ’til who knows when.
We are cell-fed and have restrictions. Wear masks and are supposed to stay six feet from one another, which rarely occurs. Heck, we must shower in a six shower-head shower side by side.
Don’t get out of cell as we usually did on a normal program. Right now, always changes because of tier quarantines, we get dayroom daily for one and a half hours, at half a tier at a time. We have two tiers side by side on second story building of Alpine. We get outside for approximately two hours, two to three times per week.
If by the misfortunes of someone on your tier gets a positive test, your entire tier is quarantined from going to main yard. Still get what they call mini yard, which is an asphalt fenced-in area. Quarantine lasts approximately three weeks. The whole tier gets temperature checks twice daily. What good that is, I don’t know. Most who get a positive c-19 test had no fever.
For over a month we had to use some old wore out masks. We just got new ones last week. Not sure when we’ll get another one. Those at first it was almost weekly and that stopped in November.
