BCSO continues COVID-19 testing at county jail

Press release from the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office:

The Sheriff’s Office continues to work with Buncombe County Health and Human Services to ensure all public health protocols are followed during isolation, quarantine, and case investigation of the positive test results for COVID-19 within the Buncombe County Detention Facility.

Two housing units are the focus of the positive tests, and as a precautionary measure, medical staff at the Buncombe County Detention Facility have conducted COVID-19 testing on all detainees in those two housing units. As a result of that testing, two additional detainees tested positive in one housing unit. Both of those individuals are asymptomatic. In the second housing unit, none of the tests came back positive. A total of four detainees have now tested positive for COVID-19 within the facility. We are conducting a second round of testing on detainees who have had close contact to any of the four detainees with a positive test result.

All staff who work in those two housing units have been tested, with no additional positive cases beyond the original group of staff who were tested and contact traced. A total of 11 detention officers and one medical staffer at the Detention Facility have now tested positive since the beginning of the cluster earlier this month.

Additional precautions to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 include detainees being let out one at a time for free time and the phone or video kiosk used to make calls being wiped down by a detention officer after each use by a detainee. Any staff or detainee in the facility reporting symptoms will be isolated and tested.

Positive test results for both staff and detainees at the Buncombe County Detention Facility will be posted online as part of the NCDHHS Outbreaks and Clusters report.

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