Prisons shut down as COVID-19 sickens guards

Battered by a wave of coronavirus infections and deaths, local jails and state prison systems around the United States have resorted to a drastic strategy to keep the virus at bay by shutting down completely and transferring their inmates elsewhere, The New York Times reported on Saturday.

"From California to Missouri to Pennsylvania, state and local officials say that so many guards have fallen ill with the virus and are unable to work that abruptly closing some correctional facilities is the only way to maintain community security and prisoner safety," the Times said in a report.

There have been more than 480,000 infections and at least 2,100 deaths among inmates and guards in prisons, jails and detention centers across the nation, a NYT database said. Among those statistics are the nearly 100,000 correctional officers who have tested positive and 170 who have died from the disease.

Confirmed COVID-19 cases in the US topped 20 million on Friday as the discovery of a highly contagious new virus strain has increased pressure to speed up the vaccination process.

In California, health officials say if the current surge of cases in the state continues, staffing shortages at already strained hospitals will erode the state's overall healthcare system.

California on Thursday deployed 1,280 medical personnel to healthcare facilities around the state as part of an effort to relieve the stress on the healthcare system.

As of Saturday, California recorded more than 2.3 million confirmed cases with more than 26,500 deaths, according to a tally kept by the Los Angeles Times.

Primary concern

As cases rose through the holiday season and into the New Year across the US, staffing has become a primary concern in hospitals.

Brad Spellberg, chief medical officer at Los Angeles County + USC Medical Center, said in an e-mail the hospital has redeployed staff who care for patients outside the intensive care unit to increase staffing in the ICU and intermediate level of care areas. "That means we are not doing elective surgeries or procedures, like colonoscopies. It also means fewer visits to outpatient doctors," he said.

As the newly reported variant is posing a bigger threat in Europe, a party took place despite France's nationwide nighttime curfew.

A French prosecutor said on Saturday that police detained seven people, including two alleged organizers, after the New Year's Eve rave party drew at least 2,500 people in western France despite a curfew and other restrictions.

French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin tweeted that actions by police around the site at Lieuron, in Brittany, "led to the end of the illegal party without violence" on Saturday morning, 36 hours after it began.

Ravers from France and abroad converged on a hangar in Lieuron on Thursday night to party into the New Year. Officials said ravers attacked the police on the first night, torching one police vehicle and slightly injuring three officers with volleys of bottles and stones.

Other parts of the world have also seen rising COVID-19 cases amid vaccination drives, including India, which authorized two COVID-19 vaccines on Sunday, paving the way for a huge inoculation program.

Liu Yinmeng in Los Angeles, Xinhua and agencies contributed to this story.