COVID 19

Prisons tend to bring together people with poor health, and environmental factors specific to correctional settings, such as crowding, aging infrastructure, and lack of sanitation, further increase the risk for SARS-CoV-2 infection and transmission in correctional settings.

These factors mean that prisons could be a ‘petri dish’ for COVID-19 if they do not receive adequate attention and support to deal with the pandemic.

Early identification and containment of SARS-CoV-2 spread in federal correctional facilities during the first wave of COVID-19 in 2020 was effective in restricting outbreaks to 5 of 43 correctional facilities.

In provincial correctional centres, where people who are unsentenced (on remand), or have a sentence of less than two years, are incarcerated, in Quebec, 105 people who were incarcerated and 51 correctional employees in 9 provincial prisons tested positive, and ten people in Ontario, British Columbia, and Alberta testing positive, in provincial correctional centres. This means that in the first COVID-19 wave in Canada, the rate of infections detected behind bars was up to nine times higher than that in the general population (Excerpt from Uncovering SARS-CoV-2 Behind Bars: Understanding the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Correctional Settings)