COVID-19 incubator: 14 more cases found in Zambo jail

ZAMBOANGA CITY—The city jail could be turning into a COVID-19 incubator as the number of cases continued to spike there with 14 more reported by a task force formed to fight the spread of the disease.

The 14 who had been infected in jail were employees and inmates.

Sheila Belen Covarrubias, spokesperson of the Zamboanga City Task Force COVID-19, said the 14 new cases came out only on May 10, Sunday.

Six of the infected were jail employees while eight were inmates of the Zamboanga City Reformatory Center, a jail just 1.3 kilometers from the city hall.

The latest cases of infection brought to 65 the total number of COVID-19 cases in the jail and 74 in the city.

Of 65 cases in the jail, 56 involved inmates while nine were jail employees.

Two infected inmates had already died in April and another is confined in an isolation ward at the Zamboanga City Medical Center (ZCMC).

All inmates and jail employees sick with COVID-19 have been isolated in a makeshift quarantine area inside the jail which the jail warden had earlier described as “heavily congested” and where social distancing was nearly impossible to heed.

In an earlier interview, Chief Insp. Nathaniel Aljas, jail warden, said two cells, several kiosks and a basketball court had been converted into quarantine facilities for sick inmates and employees.

The isolation areas had been covered with plastic material or cellophane to prevent anyone else in jail from getting near the infected inmates and employees.

Aljas described the jail facility as “highly congested” and “very susceptible to contagion.”

The facility, said the warden, “is not big.” “We are beyond 1,000 percent congestion rate,” he said.

The jail’s 600 square meter area currently houses 3,319 inmates, 374 of them women, and 128 jail employees.

“Given the over 3,000 individuals inside the facility, social distancing is not applied,” said Aljas.

At least 74 percent of the city’s COVID-19 cases are in the jail.

Dr. Justin Paber, spokesperson of the ZCMC, said the hospital has only four COVID-19 patients still confined as one had already been discharged at the weekend.

Edited by TSB