Were There More Prison Deaths From COVID-19 Than Previously Reported?

Dozens of prisoners who died in hospitals from COVID-19 after being transferred from their facilities were not included in the reported death toll from the pandemic, raising the prospect that the mortality figures in the nation’s correction systems have been underestimated, reports the New York Times. More than 2,700 people held in U.S. prisons, jails and immigration detention are reported to have died of COVID-19 in connection to  centers, but the additional cases suggest the figure was higher.

Concerns about how coronavirus deaths are documented have emerged throughout the pandemic, but public health officials say the prospect of overlooked virus deaths carries particular risks because it is challenging to prepare prisons for future epidemics without knowing the full toll. Prison and jail officials insist they followed all federal and local documentation requirements and noted that their task was the tracking of “in custody” deaths, and suggested that including the deaths of people who had recently been in their care — but no longer were — would be both complex and impractical, and might even wind up overstating the number of virus cases with ties to the facilities.