{"id":322,"date":"2020-04-01T15:41:09","date_gmt":"2020-04-01T15:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.justtalk.blog\/?p=322"},"modified":"2020-04-01T15:41:12","modified_gmt":"2020-04-01T15:41:12","slug":"open-letter-to-bc-health-and-emergency-services-who-is-infected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/2020\/04\/01\/open-letter-to-bc-health-and-emergency-services-who-is-infected\/","title":{"rendered":"Open letter to BC Health and Emergency Services: Who is infected?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

April 1, 2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Broome County Emergency Services Director Michael A. Ponticiello michael.ponticiello@broomecounty.us<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Broome County Health Department Director Rebecca KaufmanBCHealth@broomecounty.us<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dear Directors Ponticiello and Kaufman,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I write to request that you track and inform persons, including myself, who have been in close spaces within the Broome County jail over the last month and who may have come into contact with confirmed COVID-19 cases there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I make this request after reading local press reports yesterday (March 31, 2020) that quote the Sheriff saying that the correctional officer who has been confirmed as a COVID-19 victim fell ill \u201ctwo to three\u201d weeks ago. Given that presymptomatic transmission of the virus is known to occur widely, and the CDC estimates<\/a> an incubation period from 2-14 days, the correctional officer may have been transmitting the virus up to 35 days ago (three weeks plus 14 days), i.e. potentially February 26th.\u00a0 This person may not be the only case as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For those living and working inside the facility this is of course of grave concern. I assume persons working in proximity to the officer have been contacted by county officials. This cannot be left to the jail administration, who have failed to provide sanitizer even now (one person inside told me yesterday that sanitizer bottles were in the pods but were all empty and \u201cnever refilled\u201d) and who as recently as March 20th<\/sup> were training recruits with no PPE or social distancing practices followed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is however those who visited the facility, and who might be missed that concern me.\u00a0 I along with scores of others visited persons through March 20th<\/sup>\/23rd in a visiting room with often 30 to 35 persons and a changing group of 4 correctional officers in very close proximity.\u00a0 All of these persons may be at special risk, and can be easily notified that they were exposed so they can self-isolate as needed: with few exceptions the personal data of every person entering the visiting room was entered into a data base. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I thus request that I and others who may have come into contact with the infected officer(s) be notified so we may take appropriate protection.\u00a0 We do not of course need to know the identity of confirmed cases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sincerely,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

William G Martin<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Professor<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

April 1, 2020 Broome County Emergency Services Director Michael A. Ponticiello michael.ponticiello@broomecounty.us Broome County Health Department Director Rebecca KaufmanBCHealth@broomecounty.us Dear Directors Ponticiello and Kaufman, I write to request that you track and inform persons, including myself, who have been in close spaces within the Broome County jail over the last month and who may have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[7,8,12],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-broome-county","tag-covid-19","tag-jails-coronavirus","post-preview"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":324,"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322\/revisions\/324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}