At hard-hit prison east of Charlotte, an inmate with COVID-19 has died
An inmate at Albemarle Correctional Institution — the site of one of the largest COVID-19 outbreaks in the North Carolina prison system — died Tuesday as a result of complications from the virus, the state Department of Public Safety said.
State officials didn’t identify the inmate, but said he was in his late 50s and suffered from other health problems. He was hospitalized on July 8 and tested positive for COVID-19 three days later, DPS said in a news release. He was the state prison inmate to die as a result of the coronavirus.
Located in Stanly County, about an hour east of Charlotte, Albemarle Correctional houses about 780 medium-security inmates. As of Tuesday, 98 inmates at the prison had tested positive, according to DPS.
Only two other state prisons have had more inmates test positive. The largest outbreak happened at Neuse Correctional Institution, in Goldsboro, where more than 460 inmates tested positive in April. The second-largest outbreak has been at the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women, in Raleigh, where more than 220 prisoners have tested positive so far.
In late June, state prison officials announced that they would test each inmate for COVID-19. That followed a ruling by Wake County Superior Court Judge Vinston Rozier, who ordered the state to submit a plan for testing all prisoners.
The judge’s ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by the ACLU of North Carolina, the NAACP and other civil rights groups, who argue that the actions of prison leaders have left inmates vulnerable to contracting the virus.
The state has brought in the National Guard to help conduct the tests.
So far, about 8,800 state prison inmates have been tested for COVID-19, and more than 1,050 of them have tested positive.
More than a third of the state’s prisons have had at least two confirmed cases of COVID-19.
COVID-19 and other infectious diseases tend to thrive in prisons because inmates live so closely together. And those diseases endanger more than inmates and prison employees. That’s because employees can carry the virus to their families and communities.
State officials say they’ve suspended visits to the prisons and have taken many other steps to try to prevent the spread of the virus. Prison employees are also receiving hazard pay for working during the pandemic; health care workers are getting a 20 percent pay increase, while other employees are getting a 10 percent increase.
This story was originally published July 15, 2020 at 3:07 PM with the headline "At hard-hit prison east of Charlotte, an inmate with COVID-19 has died."
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