Two weeks after Gov. Tony Evers ordered Wisconsinites to stay at home and avoid close contact with people outside their own households, the first Wisconsin prisoner has tested positive for coronavirus.

Of about 23,000 inmates in Wisconsin’s prisons, 66 have been tested, according to corrections spokeswoman Anna Neal.

Forty-two of those tests came back negative. The department continues to wait on the results of the other 23.

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Six prison staffers also have tested positive, two of them at Columbia Correctional Institution, where the infected inmate is housed.

Employees are asked to self-report positive tests, but the corrections department has no way of knowing how many of its 10,200 prison employees have been tested.

Corrections Secretary Kevin Carr told Wisconsin Eye he is confident workers and inmates can be kept safe. But he also said the department is running low on personal protective equipment.

“We do have some supply of masks. We’re short on gowns for our health care providers,” he said during a Friday broadcast. “We have made requests to receive additional reinforcement supplies in those areas.”

Officials have taken steps to reduce the prison population, which experts agree is the best way to avoid widespread transmission inside the facilities and in the communities where workers live.

But that is of little comfort to those who remain in prisons, where infection control is difficult at best and it is virtually impossible to stay 6 feet apart.

In a dorm-style wing for minimum and medium security at Columbia known as “the barracks” and at several standalone minimum-security prisons, the prisoners’ beds are less than 6 feet apart, according to several inmates and their families.

“There is absolutely no possibility of social distancing in this environment,” said one woman, who didn’t want her name used for fear of retaliation against her boyfriend. “Even if they are confined to their bunks, they are still within 3 feet of other people on either side of them.”

Prisons need different strategies

Not only is social distancing impractical in prisons, they are places where “contagion is hard to avoid,” said Cecelia Klingele, an associate professor of law at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who specializes in criminal justice administration.

“People are given very little access in many prisons and jails to hygiene supplies from soap to toothpaste. Often, we ask prisoners to buy individual supplies,” she said. “There’s no easy access. They’re not washing their hands frequently and not bathing as much as we would hope.”

And prisoners likely wouldn't be allowed to freely access CDC-recommended sanitizing products like bleach and alcohol-based hand sanitizer.

Because the strategies for flattening the curve used on the outside aren’t always possible in prison, institutions around the country are looking for safe ways to release non-violent, elderly and sickly prisoners who are at high risk for complications from COVID-19, she said.

That started to happen in Wisconsin on Thursday, when 65 people were released from the Milwaukee Secure Detention facility after three staffers there tested positive. The high-rise holding site, designed for probation and parole violators, holds about 1,100 people.

About 700 people will get quicker access to the boot camp and earned release programs, which allow inmates with substance abuse issues to shave time from their sentences, according to the Department of Corrections and Gov. Tony Evers’ office.

Another 1,148 who were in jails around the state for violating probation or parole were released, and no new offenders are being admitted into prisons.

David Liners, executive director of WISDOM, a faith-based advocacy group for prisoners and their families, said Friday that those efforts were “a good first step.”

His group still would like to see Evers expedite requests for compassionate release, which allows elderly and infirm people to leave prison early if the sentencing judge agrees, and to order the state parole commission to release eligible inmates.

Inmate infected at Columbia Correctional

The infected inmate at Columbia Correctional is believed to have been exposed to the virus on a trip outside the facility before such trips were banned last month, according to Neal.

“The individual has not had any direct contact with any other person in our care since that time, and employees that had direct contact with the individual were immediately notified,” she said in an email.

Only medical staffers and people who have displayed symptoms are wearing face masks, in accordance with guidance from the state Department of Health Services and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, she said.

Columbia “has implemented intensive sanitizing and disinfectant measures with an emphasis on routinely cleaning critical areas and high touch surfaces and transportation vehicles,” she added.

Columbia inmate William Ledford said he had seen little evidence of that.

“There’s no protection here whatsoever. Nothing has changed from how we operate under regular circumstances,” he said in a phone interview. “They won’t allow bleach to us and they won’t allow the sanitizer because it’s got alcohol.”

Ledford, 57, is a double amputee confined to a wheelchair who also suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which causes breathing problems.

“I’m top of the food chain for this virus,” he said. “If it spreads through here, I’m likely to get it.”

Contact Gina Barton at (414) 224-2125 or gbarton@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter at @writerbarton.