Nabha (Patiala): On the outskirts of the Patiala district, in the middle of lush wheat fields stands a structure that has now emerged as an unlikely Covid-19 hotspot.
The New Nabha Jail reported 77 Covid positive inmates last week — including 44 women, emerging as one of two concern areas for the Punjab Prison Service. The Gurdaspur Jail is the other one, recording roughly 200 cases over the last two months.
“All 77 are asymptomatic. The women have been shifted to a special Covid facility jail in Malerkotla while the men have been moved to Bathinda,” Manjit Singh, superintendent, New Nabha Jail tells ThePrint. One woman constable also tested positive. She is also asymptomatic.
Of the total 780 inmates in the jail, 102 are women — nearly half of whom have tested positive for Covid.
The cases were revealed last month when one of the inmates was due for a visit to a gynecologist at the Nabha Civil Hospital for a checkup on 24 March. Before being brought back into the jail, she was tested — according to protocol — which is when she was found to be positive. Random sampling took place immediately after. The jail’s numbers are now down to 703.
Since the onset of the pandemic, however, no inmate from the New Nabha Jail has been hospitalised or has succumbed to the virus. This is reflective of what is happening in jails across the state, which has created three testing levels, two isolation levels and Covid jails to deal with the disease in prisons.
“Deaths, purely because of Covid, have been zero. Two inmates have died in the past one year, both of whom had severe heart diseases. We also lost two personnel, a male constable in Faridkot and a female constable in Ludhiana — who also had severe comorbidities,” said Pravin Sinha, additional director general of police (ADGP), Punjab Jails.
The state has 25 functional jails, with a total capacity of 23,700. In February 2020, there were over 24,000 inmates in these jails. This number is now at 22,000. In the past year, around 3,000 prisoners and 400 Punjab Prison Services personnel contracted the virus, according to data shared by Sinha.
In comparison, Delhi jails have seen 141 Covid cases among inmates as of 6 April, including two deaths and 293 cases among prison staff — all recovered, shows data from Delhi jail DGP Sandeep Goel.
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‘Court appearances reason behind surge in cases’
Since the pandemic began last year, the New Nabha Jail reported its highest tally only in the last week.
Authorities believe that since there were no physical appearances in court last year, the outbreak could be controlled. But given that is no longer the case, it has emerged as a source for the virus to spread.
From New Nabha Jail, around 15-20 inmates go to court on a daily basis. “Every month around 3,000 people are arrested. It had decreased to around 2,000 during lockdown. But today’s data has increased to 3,500 to 4,000 per month in Punjab,” Sinha said.
Sinha cited another possible reason behind the surge in cases. “Only about 50-60 per cent of our employees have been vaccinated. They are another source of the infection but we don’t have any data confirming this as of now.”
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How Punjab jails are handling Covid outbreak
Over the last year, Punjab put in place a multi-level approach to curb the spread of coronavirus in its jails. The primary step was to decongest jails. Around 6,000 inmates were let out on interim bail or special parole.
“From 24,000 inmates in February-March, we were down to 18,000 by May. This gave us the breathing space to bring in other changes,” Sinha said.
The next step was to identify points of contact that a jail has with the outside world — new admissions, mulaqat (interview) of undertrials twice a week, prison officials and court hearings.
With no court hearings or mulaqat, the focus was directed towards new admissions. Several hit and trial methods were used before finally landing on a solution that worked.
The first effort was to create an isolation area in every jail for new admissions, where they would quarantine for 14 days and then get tested, following which they were shifted to the main jail.
“But within 10-15 days, we realised that we are actually allowing the virus to enter the prison. By April end, we designated five special jails across the state for new admissions. Whoever was arrested, had to be brought to one of the special jails and not the nearest jail,” Sinha explained.
These new inmates were then put in isolation at the special jail for two weeks, at the end of which they were tested and then shifted to the main jail. Over here, they were isolated again for another two weeks, tested again and then placed in the barracks. But cases continued to rise.
“We then started testing all new admissions as soon as they were arrested but this led to another challenge. Reports back then used to take 48 hours and we don’t always get a remand that long,” Sinha said.
To tackle this, one or two police stations in each district were converted into temporary jails where the new admission would be kept till they tested negative and then shifted to the special jail. “By now, each new admission was being tested thrice and isolating for two weeks twice,” he said.
Inmates who tested positive were then shifted to the nearest civil hospital.
“Thankfully, most of our patients — 96-97 per cent — required primary care facilities. We would take them to the civil hospital where a guard would stand outside the building since outside the Covid ward wasn’t allowed,” Sinha said.
This gave rise to yet another hurdle. Prisoners began escaping.
To check this, five sub-jails with capacities of 70-150 were emptied and converted into primary care facilities. “In October, Punjab had seven special jails and five Covid centres. Right now, there are four Covid centres — Ludhiana, Malerkotla, Bathinda, Moga — and four special jails — Ludhiana, Patti, Gurdaspur, Muktsar,” Sinha said.
So far, around 12,000 prisoners have been transferred while 40,000 have been tested.
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The present state
Following a downward trend of Covid cases in the state during January-February and the need for manpower to sustain jails, all parolees were asked to surrender to the designated jails — Pathankot and Barnala for men and Malerkotla for women — and move to the main jails following due protocol of testing and isolation.
Based on a “first-out-first-in” mechanism, this process began on 17 February in a phased manner with the last batch scheduled to surrender by 18 May.
Parolees above the age of 60 and with comorbidities will be the last ones to be brought back in. However, reports have revealed that 170 prisoners who were set to return now have jumped parole.
With Covid cases on a rise again in Punjab jails, getting inmates to wear a mask remains a tough task.
“They are in a very different mindset. If we implement fine against those who don’t wear a mask, it will result in an outburst,” Sinha said, adding that restrictions have been placed within barracks in such a way that the two groups don’t mix.
(Edited by Amit Upadhyaya)
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