The Pinellas jail is closed until Aug. 22 due to an outbreak of COVID-19, a Pinellas sheriff’s spokesman said Monday.
The prison was on an extended lockdown earlier this summer from late May until July 11, with 40 inmates testing positive at one point.
As of Monday morning, 34 of the jail’s 2,864 inmates tested positive for COVID, said agency spokesman Sgt. Amanda Sinni.
During the confinement, in-person visits to the prison are suspended along with inmate groups and classes. Video visits are still an option to talk to someone in prison.
The facility was the only closed prison in the Tampa Bay area on Monday.
The Hillsborough County Jail had 34 inmates testing positive for COVID as of Monday, according to Hillsborough Sheriff’s spokeswoman Merissa Lynn. Lynn said there were 2,767 inmates at the jail. At the Pasco County Jail, five of the 1,516 inmates there had tested positive for the virus as of Monday, Pasco Sheriff’s spokeswoman Amanda Hunter said.
Jails and prisons are particularly susceptible to coronavirus outbreaks due to the lack of social distancing possible in the facilities. In addition, there are often many people in and out of jails, as people are booked into facilities immediately after arrest and others are released on bail.
According to the Prison COVID Project, more than 600,000 inmates have tested positive for the coronavirus and nearly 3,000 have died as of Friday.
Florida is entering its third month of high caseloads, according to recent coronavirus data from Florida health officials. From July 22 to 28, Florida reported 73,346 cases of the coronavirus, averaging more than 10,000 cases per day. The statewide positivity rate was 23.2 percent with slightly lower rates in the Tampa Bay area, ranging from 21.1 percent in Pasco to 20.5 percent in Hillsborough and 19, 1% in Pinellas County.
