CEBU CITY—The Cebu City Jail continued to churn out COVID-19 cases, raising the disease tally in the jail alone to 212 as of Wednesday (April 29).
Efren Nemeno, regional Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) director, continued to assure inmates’ relatives, however, that infected prisoners had been isolated and being treated by the Cebu City Health Department.
He said it’s not true that jail officials were abandoning sick prisoners. City health workers, he said, “are regularly going there to supervise containment measures.”
Nemeno said health workers would test all the jail’s 6,600 inmates but if there would be enough testing kits.
As of Wednesday, 380 tests were made inside jail and 212 were positive for the virus. At least 186 of those are inmates and 24 are employees of the BJMP. Two jail kitchen workers are also positive.
Some inmates and jail employee showed mild symptoms, like fever.
The city health department said none of the new infections required hospitalization.
Nemeno said all infected inmates and jail employees had been “segregated’ at the New Annex Building which could accommodate up to 3,000 inmates.
“For now, we have enough space for isolation,” he said.