99 prison inmates gets COVID-19

The overcrowding in Ghanaian prisons has resulted in fifty-four prison officers and fifty-five inmates contracting the deadly Covid-19 virus since it broke in the country in March.

The number accounts for cases in prisons all around the country, with the most recent case recorded in early November.

The Public Relations Officer of the Ghana Prisons Service, Superintendent Courage Atsem in an interview with Starr FM, noted that the recorded cases were reported and special rooms were designated for isolation and monitoring of new inmates, to curb the spread.

“From March till now. For inmates, we had a total of forty-four cases, for officers we had a total of fifty-four cases. And I must say that as we speak now all of them have recovered. We don’t have an active case at the moment” he said.

On how infected persons were isolated, with cells taking about fifty to sixty people and cubicles housing ten to fifteen people, more than three times the expected numbers, he noted “it is important to indicate that all the cases recorded especially from the side of the inmates were imported to the prison. It was through the inmates that the officers also got infected.”

“Through the admission process and all. So, what the police administration did was to designate seven facilities purposely for new admissions. The idea was that we didn’t want to add new inmates whose status we didn’t know, to the existing stock.”