Inmates discuss recent COVID-19 outbreak in Butte County jail

Action News Now spoke with four inmates at the Butte County Jail about the recent coronavirus outbreak.

Listen to the raw interview in the audio players below

Coronavirus cases at the butte county jail leaves '71' out of about 500 inmates infected.

Action news now reporter christina vitale spoke with several inmates over the phone about their concerns.

## inmate: i haven't done something so heinous to deserve what could possibly be a removal from my own life due to negligence inmates at the butte county jail scared for their life after the coronavirus rapidly spread through the jail sending sent one to the hospital.

Inmate: we've always known that if it got in here that it was going to spread like wildfire and we weren't going to have an opportunity to social distance the inmates i talked to say they're worried about the outsiders coming in inmate: some of them look pretty sick to us they're coughing and hacking the butte county sheriffs office says if entering inmates have symptoms or have been exposed to someone with covid-19 they're quarantined.

Imates: it looks like a drenched morgue in here everybody's dragging around coughing sweating cold chills aches they inmates tell me they weren't given any masks until just last week.

Me: are you all required to wear a masks right nowã inmate: maam im looking across the room at 40 people and theres not a single mask being worn standup: a lot of you have told me you wish the jail took better precautions to stop the spread before it happened but now do you feel like staff is implementing better safety protocol lawrence lucero- san francisco: they come in at 7 o'clock at night take our vitals take out temperature and that's it..

We're basically breathing the same air as everyone in the pod i told him well what if i get better and somebody else still has it and get it again he says ok well we know that could possibly happen but still this is what we have to do we checked with the sheriff's office.

They tell us they test everyoneã do weekly temperature and symptom checks and provide masks to inmates and staff and encourage but don't mandate they wear them.

Inmates with confirmed cases are isolated together and away from the remainder of the population.

Reporting in oroville christina vitale action news now coverage ou can count on.

Officials say none of the staff members has tested positive.

And the jail is working with public health and its medical services to stop the spread of the virus.

We have full interviews with several inmates - on our website - you can go to action news now dot com.###