Female inmates on edge as coronavirus sweeps through US prison
- The number of cases at the Fort Worth federal medical prison has swollen from three to 130 in the past two weeks
- Inmates say they have not been allowed to leave their rooms since last week and cells are not immediately sanitised after someone tests positive
Sandra Shoulders feels like she’s living in a horror movie.
When a woman tests positive for the virus, her mattress is dragged from the room she shares with three other people and stacked in what used to be the TV room. Every day, the mountain of mattresses grows. Shoulders tries to avoid walking past it.
The number of cases at the prison has swollen from three to 130 in the past two weeks. Inmates said they have not been allowed to leave their rooms since last week, cells are not immediately sanitised after someone tests positive, and there’s a shortage of cleaning supplies and personal protection equipment.
Out of the 1,373 women at the prison, 645 have been tested and 465 are awaiting test results, according to Bureau of Prisons data. The women who test positive for Covid-19 are quarantined in solitary confinement, said Steven, whose wife is at Carswell. He asked that he not be identified by his full name out of fear the staff would retaliate against his wife.
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“She thinks that she might die and she thinks nobody in that place cares,” he said. “And she watches people holding up signs at the men’s prison when that [outbreak] happened, and she’s saying, ‘Why does no one care about what’s happening here?’”