Prison Officials in Kansas Ignored the Pandemic. Then People Started Dying.

Описание: The men incarcerated at Lansing Correctional Facility, a state prison in northeastern Kansas, first heard about the Covid-19 pandemic from the news or from relatives on the outside. There were no known cases in the state — but in February, a man had died of an apparent heart attack at the prison, and soon dozens of others fell ill, some severely.

Rachad Austin was counting down the days left in his four-year sentence, but as more people became ill inside the prison and as news of the virus continued to trickle in, he grew increasingly worried. He had a collapsed lung due to a gunshot wound — and sometimes he suffered from chest pains and had difficulty breathing. Dozens of people around were beginning to show symptoms, “and next thing you know, they’re passed out,” Austin told me on a recent call from prison. “It was a really scary time. … We were all wondering what was going on.”

Sherman Wright was also worried. Like some 40 percent of those incarcerated in the U.S., he had asthma and diabetes, making him particularly vulnerable to complications from Covid-19. At 56, he was also one of nearly 200,000 people over the age of 55 incarcerated in the U.S. — another factor that contributed to his vulnerability.

By the end of May, both Austin and Wright had indeed tested positive — as had nearly 900 others of the prison’s 1,700 inmates. Four incarcerated men and two guards had died, and the prison had become the 14th largest cluster of coronavirus cases in the country and the largest in Kansas.

Read the full story at: https://theintercept.com/2020/07/01/c...