COCONINO COUNTY — As of June 12, 2020 the Coconino County Detention Facility in Flagstaff has 6 confirmed COVID-19 positive inmates. There are currently no staff members COVID-19 positive. Since the last media release from May 5th, we have had a total of 22-inmates confirmed COVID-19 positive and 11-Detention Staff members confirmed COVID-19 positive. We have no staff or inmates currently in our Page Holding Facility COVID-19 positive. All our staff who were positive completed the necessary number of self-quarantine days recommended by Local, State Health Departments and CDC (Center for Disease Control) guidelines and have returned to work. All of them experienced little to no health issues. The inmates who tested positive also had no significant health issues nor require medical care outside of the facility. Of those 22-inmates, 12-of them were already confirmed positive prior to arrest and10-inmates were tested while in the facility.
We have currently been able to continue to quarantine all new inmates for 14-days before placing them into general population housing units. This as well as our other mitigating efforts stated in past media releases has prevented mass spreading of the virus inside the facility. Anyone who develops COVID-19 signs and symptoms while in quarantine or in general population is moved and isolated. They are tested once the recommended number of days have passed in order to try to obtain an accurate result of positive or negative. We have also placed certain housing units under temporary quarantine if a confirmed positive inmate was living amongst other inmates in that housing unit. We then lift the quarantine once those inmates are tested and all come back negative. We work closely with the Coconino County Health and Human Services (HHS) to establish testing dates on a case by case basis. So far, we have tested 46-inmates.
Our population has stayed relatively low and currently the total population is 246. However, we have seen and uptick in the number of daily arrests and we are concerned that we may see a rise in our population to the point that we will have to discontinue the 14-day quarantine. We are working closely with HHS to determine alternatives if this does happen. We are still encouraging local law enforcement to only arrest and book individuals for violent or victim related charges and to consider cite and release alternatives.
Currently the Detention Facility lobby will remain closed to the public and we are still not allowing routine professional contact visits or entrance into the facility. Remote Video Visitation remains available. We are also still suspending all inmate programming. We will revisit all our modified changes the first week in July.