One of roughly 90 residents at a Colorado Springs halfway house tested positive for COVID-19 on Wednesday, setting off a scramble to prevent the deadly virus from spreading, the operators confirmed.

“We’re in the throes of trying to respond to this and trying to contain it as much as we can,” ComCor Executive Director Mark Wester said.

The person who fell ill is one of 87 residents who live at a ComCor facility at 3950 N. Nevada Ave. It’s based at a former motel, employs 42 staff members and many of the residents are women in a work-release program.

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Most sleep four to a room, but the largest room houses 12 women, residents say.

The person is the first ComCor resident known to be infected with the novel coronavirus; no employees have reported being sick with the virus, Wester said.

ComCor, a private corrections contractor, operates three facilities in Colorado Springs housing 294 people assigned to prison and jail alternatives.

- CHART | Number of COVID-19 cases in Colorado

Some of the people at the North Nevada Avenue facility were sentenced directly to ComCor, and others were placed there to serve the remainder of their prison sentences before being released to the community.

ComCor is in contact with county and state health officials, and residents who were exposed to the infected person are in isolation and are being monitored, Wester said.

Although Wester said ComCor has had special policies in place “for weeks” to ward off the spread of the deadly virus — including stepped-up cleaning — a woman who told the newspaper she is the infected resident disputed the claim.

-MORE: Colorado jails, prisons falling short on COVID-19 precautions, advocates say

“There’s no cleaning measures being done,” Dana Lujan, 31, told The Gazette by phone. “They’re not providing us with no kind of disinfectant spray, no disinfecting wipes. They have hand sanitizer inside the office, but that’s it.”

Other residents said the women sleep in bunk beds with little physical separation.

They eat in a communal “chow hall” down the street, and smoke cigarettes in a common area they call the “smoke pit,” residents said.

Multiple other women are showing symptoms of an illness, Lujan said.

Lujan, who has been living at the site since November, said she called the El Paso County health department two weeks ago to report concerns about residents living in close quarters with no ability to isolate should residents fall ill.

She said a representative told her to expect a return call, but she didn’t receive one. Lujan said she also tried to contact the governor’s office, without success.

The newspaper asked a county health department spokesman for comment but hadn’t heard back as of Wednesday evening.

Lujan said she grew sick within the past week, after being exposed to a woman with a severe cough who had been assigned to share a room with her and three others.

Lujan was later transferred to a different room, housing three others, raising the possibility that Lujan exposed them, too, she said.

“I got really ill about four or five days ago,” she said. “I woke up (and) I couldn’t move. My whole body hurt extremely bad. ... The second day was worse.”

She first visited an urgent care center and was sent home. The next day, after developing a fever, she went to the emergency room at Penrose Hospital on the city’s near north side, where she was tested for coronavirus.

-RELATED:Women at Colorado Springs halfway house isolated, spurring fears of COVID-19 spread

She said a county health representative contacted her Wednesday morning to notify her of the positive result.

When Lujan informed an employee at the halfway house that she had tested positive, she was directed to leave her room. Staff members brought her a chair to sit in, she said, while she awaited further instructions.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” she said by phone, while still seated outside. “Fellow residents do know now, and they’re all kind of in panic mode.”

Lujan hasn’t been able to work since March 6 after getting in trouble, suggesting she caught the illness at the facility, she said.

This story has been updated to correct the name of ComCor Executive Director Mark Wester.