Nearly 40 inmates at Allegheny County Jail test positive for covid

Terrell Leonard is being held at Allegheny County Jail on a probation violation.

In late January, he learned that one of the correctional officers who worked on his pod, 2D, tested positive for covid-19.

A short time later, he said in a court declaration, pod workers and then inmates on his pod started to experience symptoms as well.

By Feb. 1, Leonard, 28, who has sleep apnea, a deviated septum and allergies, said he developed a fever, sore throat and hot and cold sweats. Within two days, he said he had lost his sense of taste and smell, had body aches and difficulty breathing.

By Feb. 7, he had tested positive for the virus and, along with several other inmates, was transferred to pod 7D, where they were being held under quarantine.

As of Monday, 38 inmates at the jail were listed as having tested positive for covid-19, while 15 staff members were also positive.

The jail’s population on Monday was 1,623.

Warden Orlando Harper would not say how many inmates were in either quarantine or isolation. As of Tuesday, 10 pods were in quarantine and three were in isolation, according to a jail operations email obtained by the Tribune-Review.

Inmates in isolation, Harper said, are those who have covid. Those in quarantine are those people who have been exposed, or potentially exposed, to the virus, whose movement is restricted to see if they become sick, he said.

Jaclyn Kurin, an attorney with the Abolitionist Law Center, said one of the reasons why the virus continues to spread at the jail is inadequate testing.

In December, she said, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated guidance for correctional facilities, recommending mass testing to prevent asymptomatic spread when there are positive cases or a high rate of transmission.

Still, she continued, the jail is not following that guidance.

“ACJ’s obsolete, symptoms-based testing practice amounts to no more than taking people’s temperatures. It does nothing to detect asymptomatic employees and incarcerated individuals,” Kurin said.

Harper disagreed.

“As it has done all along, the facility is complying with the recommendations of the CDC, (Pennsylvania Department of Health), (Pennsylvania Department of Corrections) and Health Department as it relates to all of its policies and procedures relevant to covid, including testing, and doing so under the direction of its medical provider, (Allegheny Health Network),” Harper said in a written statement.

Kurin has spoken to more than 30 incarcerated people at the jail who have had the virus.

“Not one of them has been interviewed by the Allegheny County Health Department or the jail about who they’ve been in contact with,” Kurin said. “There’s no contact tracing.”

Most of them, she said, have had the same experience as Leonard.

When he and the others on his pod were transferred, he said in his declaration, they took their belongings, including blankets and mattresses, with them — and they were never disinfected.

Leonard, who has convictions for DUI, assault, gun and drug charges, said that the quarantine pod didn’t have hot water; that the people held there had no change of clothes; and they didn’t have enough soap to wash themselves.

Viveca Jones, Leonard’s mother, said her son is still sick but has been returned to his original pod — still with the same bedding.

“They’re still sick down there,” she said. “He says his chest hurts when he lies down at night.

“He said it feels like he has ashes in his lungs.”

Jones spoke to her son daily during the quarantine period, and he repeatedly told her how cold it was, and that there was no hot water.

Harper said that was not true.

“Regarding 7D, we haven’t had any issues with the hot water,” he said.

Carla Moser said her brother Mike Kiselka, who has neuropathy from previous cancer treatment, said he was so cold during his quarantine at the jail that he couldn’t move his hands and feet.

“He was literally crying at the end of our conversation,” his sister said. “That’s not like him.

“‘He said, ‘my whole body hurts, my lungs, my back.’ ”

She said Kiselka, who had been released to a halfway house but then returned to the jail, has not been tested for covid, but is in quarantine.

He pleaded guilty to his third DUI last week and was ordered to serve one to two years in prison. Moser said her brother wants to appeal his sentence but would rather be sent to state prison than remain in the jail.