TimesLIVE reports that as a warder at St Albans Correctional Centre in Port Elizabeth tested positive for Covid-19, prisoners are fuming that they were only asked simple questions about their health despite some showing symptoms for the coronavirus.
The total number of infections in the Eastern Cape was 175 on Tuesday afternoon. Of these, 53 inmates and 24 Department of Correctional Services (DCS) officials in the province have tested positive for the virus. The East London Correctional Centre, where the virus has spread rapidly, has the bulk of the DCS cases, namely 76. Additionally, an official at the DCS’s head office in Pretoria has also tested positive. DCS spokesperson Singabakho Nxumalo said 34 officials at St Albans had already been placed in quarantine and tests have been done on them, with the results expected within 48 hours. Tracing processes are underway in St Albans, while the DCS’s disaster management response strategy has also been activated. While the department’s swift move to quarantine officials was applauded by the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru), prisoners at St Albans feel they have been left in the lurch. “They have done nothing to check if we were infected by this warder,” an awaiting-trial prisoner in the section where the infected warder worked claimed. He also asserted that all the new inmates were not tested or kept separately when they arrived. Meanwhile, Nxumalo said the disinfection of the East London Correctional Centre was under way.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Michael Kimberley and Kathryn Kimberley at TimesLIVE
- Read too, Number of inmates in East London prison with Covid-19 jumps to 53, at TimesLIVE
- And also, Police officers, prison officials and inmates in isolation as Covid-19 hits correctional services, at Mail & Guardian
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