BOSTON (WBZ NewsRadio) — Hundreds of inmates and staff at Massachusetts correctional facilities have tested positive for coronavirus.
According to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, most of those cases are confined to three facilities.
On Sunday, the state DPH said 107 prisoners were tested at a mobile testing center at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution in Framingham. Nearly 35 percent of those tests came back positive for COVID-19.
Three staff at MCI-Framingham have also tested positive for the virus.
At MTC in Bridgewater, a medium-security facility that houses male sex offenders and sexually dangerous persons, 73 inmates have COVID-19, as do six staff members.
There are also 91 cases of coronavirus among inmates, and six cases among staff, at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution in Shirley.
Mobile coronavirus testing sites were set up at prisons and correctional facilities across the state in April, and according to the state DPH, all inmates have now been tested.
“7,679 COVID-19 tests had been performed for DOC inmates, with more than 6,700 of those tests conducted by mobile teams comprised of personnel from DOC and its contracted medical provider,” the DOC said in a statement. “There are currently 7,173 people in DOC custody; many inmates have been tested more than once.”
Five deaths have also been reported among prisoners at the Massachusetts Treatment Center in Bridgewater and two inmates have died of COVID-19 at MCI-Shirley.
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