Like a war zone : Prison that freed Paul Manafort early now ravaged by Covid Lisa Riordan Seville
Rodney Wyatt has lived more than a few lives in his 52 years.
There was his life in the drug trade more than a decade ago that landed him a 22-year sentence for conspiracy to distribute cocaine, and his life as a loving father and fiancé. There’s his life as a patient, in which he has suffered two heart attacks and endured 42 rounds of radiation treatments for prostate cancer.
And there’s his life now, as one of more than 620 prisoners at FCI Loretto in Pennsylvania who contracted Covid-19 in the last month in what was, by mid-December, the worst outbreak in the federal prison system.
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Prisons are key battlegrounds in the war against COVID-19, hot spots for the virus and sources of angst for families of staff and inmates alike.
An Oct. 2 riot at the Cambria County Prison was sparked by elevated tension during a lockdown prompted by rising case levels, Warden Christian Smith said then.
The jail had seen 140 cases among inmates in the previous two weeks.
On Friday, the State Correctional Institution at Somerset confirmed its first virus death for an inmate. The state Department of Corrections reported 274 inmate cases and 75 staff cases at SCI-Somerset at weekâs end.
Earlier this week, family members voiced concerns over conditions at the Federal Correctional Institution at Loretto, which as of Tuesday had the second-most inmate cases in the national prison system at 445.