Nine women escaped from a South Dakota jail after a prisoner tested positive for the coronavirus.
Four of the inmates have since been captured and returned to custody after they bolted from the minimum-security unit of the Pierre Community Work Centre on Monday evening.
According to the state corrections department, the nine women left without authorisation "by exiting an exterior door".
The South Dakota Department of Corrections named three of the escapees in a tweet as Kelsey Flute, 30, Jordan Wakeman, 27, and Pamela Miller, 28.
They are now in custody on Crow Creek Reservation and the state is working to have the inmates returned to state custody.
A Corrections Department official said one prisoner had already been captured.
The five remaining missing inmates are: Philomene Boneshirt, 25; Sylvia Red Leaf, 25; Alice Richards, 32; Kayla Lamont, 28; and Carly Schoneman, 23.
Officials said one inmate from the Pierre Community Work Centre has tested positive for Covid-19 and is said to be doing well in isolation.
Governor Kristi Noem said at a news conference earlier on Tuesday that all the woman who escaped were from the same unit, but they don't yet know if they were in close proximity to each.
Ms Noem added that the state is following all of the guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and health department and they are "taking every precaution possible."
The US is the third worst hit country in the world with more than 54,000 cases of Covid-19.
Prisons have proved to be a problem for many countries battling the coronavirus outbreak.
Earlier this month six inmates were killed in a jail riot in Italy as unrest spread across prisons in the country with the second highest number of cases of the coronavirus.
