This story was told by a person incarcerated at Donovan.
UCI: Okay, so now you can just go on ahead and you could just tell me anything that you’d like to share for the remainder of the time.
Caller: Okay, when they first started talking about the pandemic, they were taking away our programs, they started taking away our yard. We stopped eating in the chow hall, they started cell feeding us and nobody knew. We seen on the news, like we have televisions in our cell.
And we seen on the news with everything and things going on out on the streets and everything. But when it actually hit Donovan and it was, it spreaded like, it was like one week, four cases of COVID.
Two weeks, I think the doctor said it was 400, and no 200, it was like 200 percent in one week. 200 hundred people had COVID. And then right after that it’s like the whole facility caught COVID. They’ll go around and ask “Do you want to get tested?” COVID testing. And a lot of people refused, even though they knew they were sick or had COVID because they didn’t want to get quarantined and move to another block.
They would feel comfortable remaining in a block or celly or whatever. When I caught COVID, I tested, I tested positive, they moved me to another block. But what – what got me was, why did they keep my celly you, know?
My celly was right there you know, both of us were there in the same cell. I know he got sick. He didn’t want to move so he didn’t want to test. So just because he refused to test, he got to stay in the block.
Which just, and then he, I told him “Man you’re just going to spread it. You’ll do it worse. Just come with me and get this quarantine over with.” But what they should’ve done was, as soon I was tested positive, they knew I was sick.
They should’ve had me, my celly, and quarantined us both but, then the numbers got too high. Where there’s like the whole yard had COVID. Every building, every block, every tier, every cell, somebody [unintelligible]. And then the people that were asymptomatic, “Oh I didn’t get COVID, I didn’t catch COVID.”
And then they test, they come out positive for COVID but they’re like “Well I’m not sick.” I was like “Dude, you don’t understand the medical, your mind can’t comprehend the-” I’m not educated either but I understand that asymptomatic means you caught the virus. You are able to give it to us or somebody.
Just because you’re not feeling sick or have a headache or whatever doesn’t mean you can’t give it or pass it around. And once the first old man that passed away on my block, he was an elderly guy he was, oh I can’t say his name.
