Prison officials ignored warnings before inmate transfer that led to virus outbreak, watchdog says

San Quentin was among prisons affected by a “deeply flawed” transfer of inmates that helped spread the coronavirus, according to a new report. California corrections officials ignored the warnings of front-line health workers and pressured them to hastily transfer 189 potentially coronavirus-infected inmates from a Chino men’s prison last May, triggering a deadly outbreak of COVID-19 at San Quentin State Prison, the state watchdog reported Monday. The report heaped blame on the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and California Correctional Health Care Services, or CCHCS, for creating a “public health disaster” at San Quentin, the state’s oldest prison. “Insistence by CCHCS and the department to execute the transfers and subsequent pressure to meet a tight deadline resulted in the California Institution for Men ignoring concerns from health care staff and transferring the medically vulnerable incarcerated persons, even though the vast majority had not been recently tested for COVID-19,” it said. In a joint statement Monday, corrections and prison healthcare officials said the transfers were made “with the intent to mitigate potential harm” to the Chino inmates and were based on “a thoughtful risk analysis using scientific information available in May 2020 concerning transmission of this novel disease.” “We have acknowledged some mistakes were made in the process of these transfers,” the statement said, “and both CCHCS and CDCR have made appropriate changes to patient movement since that time.” The changes included increased testing, quarantining and enhanced use of personal protective equipment, according to the statement.