Gov. Laura Kelly said prison inmates should get the COVID-19 vaccine before the general population during an interview Wednesday with The Topeka Capital-Journal.
"I'm going to continue to take action based on the science and what we know works," she said. "We do know that congregate living centers are hotspots, whether you talk about prisons, you talk about nursing homes.
"The only way ultimately to rid those kinds of facilities of the virus is for the vaccination to come. It makes all sorts of sense for us to include all congregate settings in the first line of vaccines."
When asked for clarification twice that she would support prisoners getting vaccinated before the general population, she said yes, because prisons and correctional facilities are congregate settings.
"It's not just prisoners that we're talking about. There are a lot of people, state employees who work in those facilities, who are the correctional officers, who provide medical service, who provide food service," Kelly said. "There are all sorts of other people who were not convicted of a crime who work in those facilities, and vaccinations protect them, too."
Kelly previously hadn't given a firm answer on where prisons and inmates sit on the vaccine priority list, despite concern from advocates that they will have to wait for a vaccine.
When asked Tuesday at a news conference when prisoners might get the vaccine, Kelly simply said that "when we get to that point (of vaccinating congregate settings), the correctional facilities will be included."
Whether that included inmates or not, and at what exact point in time, was unclear at the time.
Corrections staff who work in Kansas Department of Corrections medical units are considered health care workers and are in the first-priority bucket for getting the vaccine, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment has said.
Conversations have been underway between the state and a union representing corrections staff as to when other workers should be immunized, with leaders urging that the vaccine be distributed as quickly as possible to both staff and inmates.
The debate over when prisoners should get the vaccine has been contentious nationally.
Initially, Colorado’s vaccine distribution plan had prisoners in one of the higher-priority groups.
But Gov. Jared Polis backtracked after outcry, flatly dismissing the notion that prisoners will get the vaccine before members of the general public.
“There’s no way that prisoners are going to get it before members of a vulnerable population. ... There’s no way it’s going to go to prisoners before it goes to people who haven’t committed any crime,” Polis told reporters earlier this month. “That’s obvious.”
But inmates in other states, most notably California, began receiving vaccinations earlier this week.
And the Federal Bureau of Prisons reversed course on a decision made earlier in the pandemic to vaccinate staff before inmates, paving the way for prisoners in federal correctional facilities to get the shot.
Prisons have been a major hotspot for COVID-19. More than 6,000 cases have been reported among inmates and staff in KDOC facilities since the pandemic began, with hundreds more in local county jails.
Fourteen staff members and inmates have died of COVID-19, KDOC said, and many of those were inmates who were older or had underlying health conditions.
Correctional facilities are designed in a way where it is virtually impossible to social distance. Many residents are older or have underlying health conditions that put them at a higher risk of COVID-19 complications.
And incarcerated individuals are disproportionately Black and Hispanic, communities that have been hit hard by the virus.
KDOC has said repeatedly that it has been working with state health officials to contain the virus's spread.
But activists, inmates and their family members see things differently. Concerns have been raised that COVID-19-positive inmates were being housed alongside those who had tested negative for the virus.
"The complete lack of protocols and protections, I think, is causing a lot of concern and stress among our clients,” Lauren Bonds, legal director for the Kansas chapter of the ACLU, said earlier this month.
Read more here: https://www.cjonline.com/story/news/coronavirus/2020/12/23/gov-kelly-kan...