Waterbury, VT – The Vermont Department of Corrections is announcing 38 incarcerated individuals and nine staff members tested positive for COVID-19 at the Northeast Correctional Complex (NECC) in St. Johnsbury during testing conducted January 13. The incarcerated individuals reside in the same building as the 11 prior positives, the first of whom was confirmed to have the virus in a January 8 test.
The building is being treated as a quarantine unit. Fifty-nine incarcerated individuals lived in the building when the outbreak was first detected. The facility remains on full lockdown, contact tracing continues, and Vermont DOC and Vermont Department of Health are coordinating follow-up testing for the entire facility next week.
“While numbers like this are troubling, Vermont DOC has been preparing for this rate of spread since the first information about Omicron’s transmissibility became available,” said Commissioner Nicholas Deml. “We are grateful nobody is presenting with serious symptoms and nobody is hospitalized. The NECC staff and others from around the DOC system are working tirelessly against a challenging backdrop. We’re grateful to them as they’re the ones on the frontlines combatting this virus."
As of Saturday morning, 57 incarcerated individuals are considered positive across five Vermont facilities.
Statewide, 72 positive staff cases currently exist across six correctional facilities, six field offices, and the Vermont Correctional Academy.
Families and friends of incarcerated individuals are encouraged to reach out to the Vermont DOC Office of Constituency Services with questions: https://doc.vermont.gov/information-inmate-families-and-friends. Click here for the direct link to the online Friends and Family portal.
Updates and data on the COVID-19 response in Vermont’s correctional facilities can be found at https://doc.vermont.gov/covid-19-information-page. Prior press updates can be found at https://doc.vermont.gov/content/press-releases.
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