Strangeways Prison has been hit by a coronavirus outbreak.
Manchester City Council and the Ministry of Justice have confirmed that the prison has seen a spike in cases of the virus.
Government figures revealed that in the seven days to February 16th there was a 105 per cent increase in cases in the Strangeways district - from 40 to 82. But the MOJ will not confirm how many of these are within the prison.
A spokesperson for Manchester City Council said: “The Council is aware of an outbreak of Covid-19 in HMP Manchester and we are working with our colleagues at Public Health England and the Ministry of Justice to monitor any new cases, and prevent the virus from spreading further.”
A prison service spokesman said: “Our priority is to limit the spread of the virus and protect the lives of those who live and work in our prisons.
“We have taken precautionary measures at Manchester, in line with public health guidance, and will continue to closely monitor the situation.”
It is understood that mass testing of inmates at Strangeways has resulted in an increase in cases being discovered as some prisoners had not been showing symptoms but tested positive.
A 66-year-old Strangeways prisoner died in hospital on March 26th last year after testing positive for the virus.
The outbreak comes after it was reported on Friday that five wings of Forest Bank prison in Salford are in lockdown due to a coronavirus outbreak.
That outbreak disrupted proceedings at Manchester Crown Court with one high-profile trial and two sentencing hearings having to be postponed due to defendants not being produced from Forest Bank due to the lockdown.
The latest data from the Ministry of Justice shows that there were 846 positive Covid-19 cases among adult prisoners for the week ending 15 February in the UK, down from 1,005 the week before.
The government says it took 'drastic' measures to prevent fears of a major death toll in prisons during the pandemic, including restricting activity outside cells to less than an hour a day.
During the first national lockdown last year, prisoners claimed jails were turning into 'ticking time bombs' after three deaths from coronavirus and inmates 'banged up 23-and-a-half hours a day'.
Inmates described heightened tensions behind the walls at Strangeways and Salford's Forest Bank prison - and prison officers said it's 'remarkable' that tensions have not spilled over during the crisis.
However, Prisons Minister Lucy Frazer believes the measures have ultimately worked.
Speaking to the BBC last week she said: "We did take very drastic, serious action at the beginning of the pandemic in March, and the reasons for that are that Public Health England advised us that if we didn't take action, we would be looking at 2,500 to 3,500 deaths in prisons.
"Obviously that was very concerning and worrying so we took a variety of measures.
"One was restrictions, lockdown across the estate, but we did other things as well, we compartmentalised people, so we separated those out who were symptomatic, those who were shielding, and in that way managed the estate.
"We brought in temporary units, 1,000 temporary units so that people could self-isolate better.
"And the result of all those measures that we took is, we didn't see the number of deaths that had been predicted.
"We did see sadly some losses of life, but to date we have lost less than 100 people, significantly less than predicted."
