Muscogee jail inmates sent to hospital with fevers. They didn’t get coronavirus test, sheriff says
Two Muscogee County Jail inmates running fevers were sent to Piedmont Columbus Regional Hospital on Wednesday to determine whether they might have become infected with the new coronavirus, but later were returned to the jail, Sheriff Donna Tompkins said Thursday.
Both inmates are men, the sheriff said. One had been in jail for 13 days; the other was jailed in October, she said. The newcomer’s temperature had returned to normal Thursday, but both remain isolated from the general jail population, she said.
Tompkins withheld the inmates’ names to protect their medical privacy.
Because all inmates coming into the jail now are screened and quarantined for 14 days to ensure they aren’t infected, the newcomer had not been admitted into the general population, but the other inmate had, she said.
Though the longer-serving inmate had been in the general population, the sheriff’s jail staff does not believe he could have gotten the virus from anyone entering the jail, because of the screening process and other safety measures instituted during the COVID-19 emergency, Tompkins said.
The sheriff said she was told the hospital had no tests available. Piedmont said it continues to collect samples for testing under Centers for Disease Control guidelines. Those samples are tested at a laboratory, not at the hospital, said hospital representative Jessica Roberts.
Roberts said she was not familiar with the inmates’ situation and did not know whether they met the CDC guidelines for testing. Anyone with questions may call Piedmont’s toll free number at 1-866-460-1119, she said.
Tompkins said later Thursday that the jail had made arrangements with the public health department to have the inmates tested for the coronavirus.
“We really do not believe that they’ve had contact with anyone that could have given them the coronavirus, but of course we’re going to do our due diligence to try to make sure that neither of them are going to test positive,” she said.
The jail so far has not quarantined others with whom the two had contact, she said.
The jail population has been in steady decline since Muscogee County declared a “judicial emergency” on March 13, ending court proceedings that would put people in close contact, such as jury trials and grand jury sessions.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys since have been working to bond out or otherwise release inmates facing less serious charges. The jail population has dropped from a recent high of 995 on March 16 to 912 on Thursday, according to the sheriff’s records.
This story was originally published March 26, 2020 at 1:30 PM.