At least 40 inmates have tested positive for the COVID-19 in Karachi Central Jail on Monday.
Inspector General of Police (Prisons) Nusrat Mangan has said that the COVID-19 positive prisoners have been isolated and kept in quarantine. Mangan further said COVID-19 tests are also being conducted in other jails of Sindh.
He maintained that all prisoners and staff will be tested, adding that around 300 prisoners are being tested daily. The police official mentioned that there are approximately 3,500 prisoners at the Karachi Central Jail.
Earlier, Chief Minister Sindh Murad Ali Shah had confirmed that the COVID-19 claimed three more lives in a single day, after which the provincial death toll reached 280.
While the senior superintendent of Karachi Central Jail, Muhammad Hassan Sahito, and other officials were also screened, they were found not to be infected.
When the virus made its presence known in Sindh, prison authorities had voiced fears of a catastrophic outbreak in the jails, pointing out that the overcrowding and confined quarters meant that a single infected prisoner could rapidly infected hundreds of other inmates.
In a letter to the Sindh home department, Prisons IG Nusrat Ali Mangan had written that overcrowding at the province’s prisons posed an imminent threat and could lead to the spread of the coronavirus in the cells.
There are currently over 16,000 prisoners housed in Sindh’s 24 jails – which have an actual capacity of 13,500 inmates. Karachi Central Jail has the highest number of prisoners, holding 3,619 inmates opposed to its capacity of 2,400. The number used to be even higher – there were over 5,000 prisoners at the prison at one point.
