An employee at the state penitentiary in Salem has tested positive for coronavirus, the Oregon Department of Corrections announced Wednesday.

The person is the first in the prison system with a known case of COVID-19, corrections officials said. The agency learned of the positive test early Wednesday, said corrections spokeswoman Jennifer Black.

“We have been preparing for this day for the last several weeks,” state Corrections Director Colette Peters and Deputy Director Heidi Steward said in a message to more than 4,500 employees. “Our thoughts go out to this employee and their family.”

The agency said it is impossible to know if other employees have tested positive for the illness since “that information is not always shared with us because it is protected health information,” Black said.

The agency declined to provide the worker’s position or any demographic information. People who have been in “close contact” with the person have been notified.

The agency said on Wednesday that it began testing inmates who meet federal public health guidelines for testing on March 8. So far, it has tested 13 inmates out of a population of 14,449 statewide. Three are awaiting results; 10 have tested negative.

Black said the prisons are no different from the community in terms of coronavirus infection "and just like in the community, there are probably asymptomatic employees” and prisoners.

Social distancing poses a challenge in prisons and jails, where people live in close quarters and, studies show, the population in general tends to be sicker. Oregon is also home to an aging prison population; the prison system houses among the highest percentages of prisoners ages 55 and older in the country, according to a 2018 study by Pew Charitable Trusts.

Prisons have opened medical wards to triage inmates with symptoms of respiratory illness and will ramp up coronavirus testing as tests have become more available, said Dr. Christopher DiGiulio, chief of medicine for the Corrections Department.

Medical staff have identified the system’s most medically vulnerable inmates and placed them in single cells “if at all possible,” DiGiulio said. Those prisoners total 817.

A newly formed “hygiene committee” also is reaching out to “each and every unit” to provide basic information on how people can protect themselves from the disease, he said.

Routine medical visits to prison health clinics are on hold so the agency can conserve personal protective equipment and practice social distancing “just like what is happening in the community,” DiGiulio said.

The agency’s testing practices have “evolved,” he said, as more tests become available statewide and testing activity is “changing very quickly” in the prisons due to greater testing capacity.

He said the Oregon Health Authority and the state’s lab have told the Corrections Department that “there are no limitations or restrictions anymore on our ability to test our own patients.”

Medical staff members at each prison assess a patient’s symptoms and registered nurses carry out the tests, DiGiulio said.

If someone in custody shows signs and symptoms of flu or COVID-19, including fever, cough and shortness of breath, “they will be tested as healthcare providers direct,” Black said on Wednesday.

Each prison now has a respiratory triage clinic for people with symptoms, he said.

If someone in custody develops the virus, the person will be isolated, DiGuilio said. People awaiting test results are also held in “respiratory isolation conditions,” he said.

“We have been preparing for weeks to separate the vulnerable, the ill, from everyone else,” he said.

If someone in custody contracts the disease, they’ll be treated in prison, provided the person is stable and doesn’t need a higher level of medical care, DiGiulio said.

Stacy Chamberlain, executive director of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees in Oregon, AFSCME, is one of the unions that represents prison workers in Oregon.

She said the union is worried about how the short-staffed corrections agency will manage virus-related absences. She said corrections workers already work mandatory overtime.

“If we start seeing corrections officers being sick, who is going to cover that work, let alone what it means inside the institutions,” she said.

The union successfully lobbied, she said, to have dental services in prisons temporarily halted since professionals who do that type of work are especially vulnerable to the disease. Transporting inmates to local hospitals for routine medical treatment also has been suspended, she said.

Employers in general aren’t doing enough to protect workers from the contagious virus, Chamberlain said. She’s particularly concerned that the prison system lacks personal protective equipment, calling it “one of the big issues we have been yelling about for weeks and the lack of it and the supply of it is a concern in prisons.”

DiGuilio on Monday said the Corrections Department had adequate supply of the equipment for now.

-- Noelle Crombie; ncrombie@oregonian.com; 503-276-7184; @noellecrombie

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