ORLANDO, Fla. _ After Florida's prison system in August reported the most deaths in one month from COVID-19 since the pandemic began, corrections Secretary Mark Inch announced Friday he is planning to soon reopen some institutions for visitation.
The agency plans to allow for modified visitation with "numerous safety measures" starting Oct. 2 "at institutions where it is safe and appropriate to do so," Inch said Friday in a video shared on social media. Facilities have been closed to visitors for almost six months.
The agency has not yet shared publicly which institutions this will involve or other details about the safety measures or modifications.
"We understand how important in-person visitation is for maintaining family bonds, but also want to minimize the risk for our incarcerated population," Inch said.
As of Friday, 117 prisoners have died after testing positive for the virus, the second-most of any state prison system, only behind Texas, according to the Marshall Project. Three Florida corrections officers have died of the virus as well.
About 50 COVID-19 deaths among prisoners were reported in August, by far the most since the pandemic began. July had previously seen the most reported inmate deaths, at 25.
The Florida Department of Corrections first suspended in-person visits in early March, which Inch called "one of our very first precautionary actions." The agency has continued to extend that suspension, most recently through Sept. 14.
In Friday's message, Inch touted the agency's "mitigation and prevention efforts" which he said "protected more than 80% of the inmate population from contracting the virus." _ but it wasn't clear how that number was confirmed when many inmates have not been tested.
As of Friday, 15,812 inmates have tested positive for the virus, while more than 63,000 tests have come back negative from inmates, according to the agency's COVID-19 dashboard.
The agency has confirmed that the data on negative tests includes retests of the same person, so it's still unclear how many total inmates have been tested. There were about 85,000 people in FDC custody in August.
About 80% of those who had tested positive have since been medically cleared, per FDC.
More than 2,800 staff have tested positive and three have died of the virus.
