This letter was written by a person incarcerated at Donovan.
When I first heard the news, I was uncertain on how COVID was going to affect us in prison!? Since we’re in a bubble and like with the common cold/flu. Once someone gets sick, everyone starts showing the symptoms. The fact that most prisoners practice good hygiene helped lessen the worry of spread.
Unlike the rest of this prison, we are fortunate there has been no positive cases of COVID-19 to the inmate population on our yard. All the reports on the news concerning the number of infections and deaths all over the world worries me, for my family. As the time passes and we got well informed on what was going on with COVID-19. We were restricted on movement (lock-down).
There was still no vaccine at the time. So, there was some uncertainty to how the pandemic was going to end?
Now, after getting vaccinated (second shot February 22, 2021). We’re waiting for things to get back to normal. I haven’t played (group sports) basketball in a very long time. It’s my favorite sport.
My safety was never a big concern. Like I said we live in a bubble, so once people in here realized the seriousness of this pandemic no one had a problem with following guidelines, and wearing masks.
Visitations are an important factor to keep ties with family close. So reduced visitation had been hard on most. It’s helped we’re able to keep contact with our families over the phone.
As for the vaccinations, they were being administered according to the phase/tier system. Inmates had their choice to whether to receive the shot or not. I received mine on January 12, 2021 too (first shot), and the second shot was on 2/22/21. I actually got lucky to receive my shot ahead of the rest of the population because there were left over vaccines, after the 75 year and older bracket.
