As the number of infections and deaths from the new coronavirus rise across Texas, prison officials are ramping up efforts to prevent an outbreak among the state’s 140,000 inmates.

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice announced this week that in addition to taking the temperatures of correctional officers, it will do so for incoming offenders arriving at its 24 intake facilities. Prison hospitals will limit the number of medical students who see patients to prevent transmission possibilities. Prisons will also provide soap to inmates at no charge and extend their phone time.

"It’s most important that you remember that we do not have any signs of the coronavirus within TDCJ. We’re taking several precautions to help make sure we keep it that way," Executive Director Bryan Collier said in a video posted online Tuesday.

Inmate advocates, however, continue to ask the TDCJ to do more to protect both inmates and correctional officers from COVID-19, including limiting movement inside prisons and releasing offenders who are approaching parole dates.

"The contagion is a matter of when, not if, and we want to make sure that TDCJ is taking steps immediately to reduce the population and not wait until the first case arrives," said Doug Smith, senior policy analyst at the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition.

Prison officials said that any employee with a temperature of 100.4 degrees or higher would be sent home. An inmate with a fever will be given a surgical mask and medically isolated until doctors can assess the patient’s risk of coronavirus infection.

As of Wednesday, the agency hadn’t denied entrance to anyone because of fever, TDCJ spokesman Jeremy Desel said.

Last week, after Gov. Greg Abbott suspended visitation at prisons, advocates urged the agency to do more.

Among their demands were to lift prohibitions on hand sanitizer, waive fees for doctors visits and increase access to phones for inmates who will be unable to see family and friends.

While hand sanitizer continues to be off limits for inmates and the health services fee remains $13.55, the agency is giving out bars of soap, which are manufactured at five of its units. It is also allowing inmates to use phones until 11:30 p.m. each day.

But the biggest request some have made is that Texas reduce its incarcerated population by expediting parole. Some inmates, for example, have been granted parole, but must first complete rehabilitative programming.

State Rep. James White, R-Hillister, who chairs the House Corrections Committee, said he would suggest TDCJ and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles consider such releases only if the programming were to stop because of COVID-19.

"There’s a reason why our prison population is decreasing and we have the discretion to close prisons and one of the reasons — I'm not saying it’s the overall reason — is having targeted, effective rehabilitation programming that equips incarcerated people to go back to their families as loving and productive citizens," White said.

He said the Parole Board must continue to weigh public safety concerns and give victims, prosecutors and law enforcement the right to comment before decisions are made.

The U.S. Bureau of Prisons has already implemented a number of the safety protocols Texas officials announced this week, but they have also limited movement among inmates.

Coronavirus in Texas: What we know, latest updates

Desel said TDCJ hasn’t limited movement within its facilities because officials don’t want to create panic or hysteria.

Italian prisoners rioted and took guards hostage after visitation was suspended because of COVID-19.

"I mean, there aren’t a significant number of opportunities for mass gatherings," Desel said. "Most of the classes that are taught by the Windham school district within our facilities are smaller. They are in that 10-person range, and we’re instructing all of our personnel to space people out as best they can in those spaces. But the idea is to keep things as normal as possible."

TDCJ subcontracts with the University of Texas Medical Branch and Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center to provide inmates with health care.

Leaders at both health institutions said they hoped to treat inmates who test positive for COVID-19 in the prison unit where they are assigned. They said they had identified areas within prisons where inmates who test positive can be isolated.

"If you look across the United States, very few patients who have coronavirus are ill enough to be in hospitals," said Dr. Cynthia Jumper, vice president of health care policy at Texas Tech.

If an inmate were to require more intensive treatment, hospital officials said, the individual could either be transferred to the Montford Unit in Lubbock, which has 94 beds, or to Hospital Galveston, which has 110 beds.

But inmates are currently being treated at both of those locations for other reasons, and those patients can’t necessarily be transferred. The hospitals must consider who can be placed where safely.

Hospital officials said if the facilities reach capacity or if inmates require more intensive treatment closer to where they are being confined, they would go to a local hospital.

"It’s not our intention to overburden community hospitals, but emergencies arise not even necessarily related to COVID-19 infections. We’ve got a lot of older patients who have heart attacks, strokes and liver problems who will need the use of the hospital, as they have for the last 25 years," said Dr. Owen Murray, vice president of offender care services for UTMB.

About 20% of Texas inmates, nearly 30,000, are 50 or older, a group the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has identified as having a higher risk of becoming severely ill from the COVID-19 virus. And Murray said inmates are generally sicker than the general population.

"Due to the lack of medical care and the histories they have out on the street, a 55-year-old patient is more like a 65-year-old patient," he said.

So staff at UTMB and Texas Tech are counting their personal protective equipment and hoping, like health care professionals in the free world, they don’t run out.

Both the facilities are teaching hospitals that usually see patients with several students. Now, though, they are limiting patient visits to only one provider in an effort to ration supplies.

"We have enough for right now," Jumper said, "but if we get an overwhelming amount of patients coming in, we will run short, as will every hospital and clinic in the nation."