The Poojappura Central Prison, which has been ravaged by COVID-19, reported its first casualty after an aged undertrial prisoner succumbed to the illness late on Saturday. Raising the spectre of a large community cluster having formed in the prison, 144 more inmates and an assistant prison officer tested positive for the infection.
The deceased, a 71-year-old Kilimanoor native, was the first inmate to be diagnosed with the disease. Suffering from various other comorbidities, including asthma, he tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 after collapsing and falling unconscious on August 11. Though he had exhibited various symptoms, including fever, jail officials had initially considered COVID-19 a remote possibility considering his lack of parole history.
Imprisoned since 2016, the deceased had been awaiting trial in a murder case. He had been arrested by the Kilimanoor police and was being tried at the court of the Judicial First Class Magistrate-III at Attingal. He was lodged in Block 7 of the Central Prison along with other inmates of the same age group. His diagnosis prompted the jail authorities to launch intensive COVID-19 testing in all prisons across the State.
In the Poojappura Central Prison alone, 361 prisoners and five staff members, including four assistant prison officers and a doctor, tested positive within six days. As many as 660 people, including around 20 officials, have been tested so far there.
Prison hospital
All of those infected are currently being treated at the hospital on the prison premises. However, with one of the two medical officers indisposed, the Prison Department has written to the Health Department seeking the services of a medical team to attend to the growing number of COVID-19 patients.
The prison officials have also been supervising the treatment and security of remand prisoners who have been lodged in the COVID-19 first-line treatment centre established at the LBS Institute of Technology for Women, Poojappura.
