Cathleen Allison / AP
Inmates at Nevada’s Warm Springs Correctional Center walk around Unit 1, A-wing on Thursday, May 3, 2007, in Carson City.
Friday, Nov. 13, 2020 | 6:26 p.m.
About 80% of the inmate population in a Northern Nevada prison have tested positive for COVID-19, the Nevada Department of Corrections announced Friday evening.
Last week, 93 inmates at Warm Springs Correctional Center in Carson City tested positive, prompting officials to test all 525 inmates, with 331 additional tests coming back positive on Friday, officials said.
That means 424 of the 535 inmates had tested positive, in addition to 25 staffers who also were infected with the virus, officials said.
The medical prognosis for those infected was not revealed.
The news comes the day Gov. Steve Sisolak announced that he, too, was infected, although he wasn’t showing any symptoms, according to his office.
Nevada broke another daily record with 1,857 new coronavirus cases reported on Friday. At least 1,893 people have died from the virus in the state since mid-March, most of which have occurred in the populous Clark County.
The Warm Springs Correctional Center was on lockdown, and inmates were being fed in their cells, officials said. Medical staff are evaluating symptomatic inmates and could be transferred to a “higher level of care if indicated,” officials said.
It wasn’t clear how the virus invaded the prison.
Inmates entering any Nevada prison are screened and quarantined for at least 14 days and require a negative COVID-19 test before they join the general population, officials said.
Workers, who are required to wear face coverings and social distance, also are screened daily, and common areas are sanitized every two hours, officials said.
Confirmed infections in the U.S. on Friday were nearing 11 million, with 244,217 deaths reported, according to a tally from Johns Hopkins University.
According to state data, no Nevada inmates or staffers in Nevada-run correctional facilities have died.
