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    Correctional Facilities Are COVID-19 Hot Spots. Why Don't They Get Vaccine Priority?

    Prisons, jails and detention centers have much higher coronavirus case and fatality rates than the general public. But attitudes toward inmates mean bank tellers may get vaccinated before they do.
    by Becky Sullivan Dec 24, 2020 6 minutes
    In March of 2020, Robbie Dennis was transferred to the Louisiana State Penitentiary, known as Angola. The CDC first recommended that Americans wear masks on April 3; prisoners at Angola didn't receive them until June or July, Dennis says.

    The equation for COVID-19 hot spots has been clear since the earliest days of the pandemic: Take facilities where people live in close quarters, then add conditions that make it hard to take preventative measures like wearing PPE or keeping socially distant.

    Major outbreaks in nursing homes this spring shocked the nation. Now, residents of those facilities are among the first in line for the vaccine.

    Similar conditions plague the nation's jails, prisons and detention centers, where massive outbreaks continue. The 2.3 million people incarcerated in the U.S. are nearly five times as likely to test positive for coronavirus as Americans generally and nearly three times as likely to die, after adjusting for age and sex.

    But the question of when inmates will receive the vaccine remains wide open. Experts say that's because the states and agencies that control distribution face political pressure from a general public that has historically been unsympathetic to the health of incarcerated people.

    "In terms of public health risks and priorities, I think

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