Four incarcerated people at the Penobscot County Jail have tested positive for COVID-19.
The Penobscot County Sheriff’s Office said the jail’s transfer testing protocol turned up one incarcerated person who tested positive for the coronavirus, prompting facility-wide testing. Three other incarcerated people, housed in the same area as the first person, also tested positive.
Sheriff Troy Morton said the jail’s COVID-19 safety protocols for screening, quarantining, personal protective equipment use, testing and vaccinations were in place.
Morton said the jail contacted the Maine Department of Corrections and was talking with the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention about precautions to prevent the spread of the disease.
On Tuesday, the Cumberland County Jail reported that 29 people, two of them staff members, had tested positive for the virus. They said only 12.7 percent of the 331 people housed at the jail Tuesday had been vaccinated. The jail did not return an email Thursday night seeking an update on its outbreak.
An outbreak at the York County Jail in Alfred over the summer was one of the state’s largest outbreaks to date, infecting more than 80 people.
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