Washington (CNN) Paul Manafort's lawyers have asked for the former Trump campaign chairman to be moved out of prison due to potential health risks from the coronavirus.

Manafort is hoping prison officials will consider letting him stay under home confinement with his wife in Northern Virginia either while the pandemic continues or even for the four more years he's set to stay behind bars, his lawyers said in a letter to the federal Bureau of Prisons Monday afternoon.

Fear of coronavirus proliferating behind bars has consumed inmates across the country, and federal prisons have reported in total 13 inmate deaths from Covid-19 as of Tuesday morning. Many prisoners have asked judges to release them, though relatively few have been successful.

The prison in Western Pennsylvania, FCI Loretto, where Manafort lives now, currently has no reported cases of coronavirus.

"It is only a matter of time before the infection spreads to staff and inmates at FCI Loretto, at which time it may be too late to prevent high-risk inmates, such as Mr. Manafort, from contracting the potentially deadly virus," Manafort's defense lawyer Kevin Downing wrote.

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