COVID superspreader cell phones are literally killing prisoners

There’s no doubt that contraband cell phones are more than just a scourge in federal, state and local correctional facilities all over the U.S.. Contraband phones are responsible for organizing prison riots, escapes, drug sales and even attempted murder outside of the prison walls. But in the age of the COVID pandemic, cell phones deliver a new threat, and this time, it’s infecting its own phone users and everyone around them too.

This week, in what’s being described as a “dangerous disturbance” at a downtown St. Louis jail, inmates wielding handmade signs smashed windows, set fires and clogged toilets in a protest over “unsafe conditions amid the coronavirus pandemic”. The prisoners could clearly be seen from the public streets through smashed windows on the fourth floor of the CJC (City Justice Center) holding signs  and wearing masks.

Prison and health officials have yet to acknowledge a big superspreader – cell phones.

This is the 3rd in a series of incidents reported revolving around health conditions and the spread of COVID-19. With social distancing an impossibility, it’s not hard to imagine rampant COVID spread in such tight quarters overcrowded with prisoners. State and federal prison populations are experiencing COVID-19 case rates four times higher than that of the general public. Efforts to decrease concentrations of prison populations and even dispense vaccinations to prisoners before the general public have been proposed but little has been done to actually stem the rising tide of infections. Mandatory mask wearing among the prison population is sporadically enforced which can help slow the spread of COVID through nasal and mouth droplets and nano particles but prison and health officials have yet to acknowledge a big superspreader – cell phones.

Unlike your personal phone, if prisoners manage to smuggle in a cell phone, they usually share it in trade for drugs, cigarettes, money or protection with other inmates. That same cell phone is handed off to dozens of prisoners over the course of a day and it only takes one infected individual to create a superspreader device. But just how infectious are cell phones?

According to Dr. Collin Lee, infectious disease specialist at Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit in Ontario, “The coronaviruses, like many other viruses, can survive for a number of hours on surfaces,”

“Cellphones are the filthiest object you carry with you,” said Colin Furness, an infection control epidemiologist and assistant professor at the University of Toronto. Infectious disease experts and phone manufacturers agree that users should wipe down their phones regularly especially after intermittent phone touching and that’s just guidelines for regular phone users. Poor hygiene and overcrowding make for a COVID petrie dish in most prisons which is exactly what we are seeing.

Ironically, inmates are using these same COVID superspreader phones to make pleas for help with and documenting the deadly outbreaks they are seeing with their own eyes.

In a 20 minute Facebook Live video recorded directly from his cell, federal inmate, Aaron Campbell, begs for help with Coronavirus spread which killed 3 inmates in his facility already. “They are literally leaving us here to die,” he exclaims in the video.

Of course it’s punishable in any prison to be caught with contraband such as a cell phone so these devices are used, hidden (sometimes in body cavities) and then handed off to many more inmates. There are no facilities to wipe down or sterilize phones among prisoners and the authorities are certainly not going to provide any means to clean items that have already been deemed dangerous contraband so the pandemic continues to spread at an alarming rate in prisons all over the country. So far, U.S. prison and jail populations have suffered over 275,000 infections and 1,700 deaths due to COVID-19.

Whether it’s gang violence, threats, drug deals or infectious superspreaders, contraband cell phones pose a dangerous threat to everyone and must be detected and eliminated from prisons, jails and anywhere they are deemed illegal or unsafe to operate.