Nearly a dozen detainees in Haiti’s largest prison have tested positive for the novel coronavirus, an administrator told AFP Thursday, as fears mounted that the disease could spread like wildfire through the country’s dirty and overcrowded correctional system. Last week, approximately 50 prisoners in the Port-au-Prince penitentiary reported having a fever, prompting health officials to test 12 inmates as a sample. Results indicated that 11 were positive for COVID-19. “I can confirm that COVID-19 entered the prison,” Charles Nazaire Noel, director of the national prison system, told AFP. “We fought a tough battle to avoid that, but unfortunately, it happened. We are not going to give up, we will continue to strengthen the prison sanitation system,” he said, adding that he has asked the Ministry of Health to screen all of the penitentiary’s inmates. Haiti has more than 11,000 people behind bars — most of them waiting to go on trial, sometimes for years — in such deplorable conditions that human rights activists liken it to torture. The poorest country in the Americas has reported 663 cases of the novel coronavirus, and has carried just over 2,100 tests since the first cases were detected on March 19. According to the latest official report Thursday, COVID-19 has killed 22 people in Haiti. Now that the virus has entered the prison, located in the heart of the capital, officials fear the death toll could quickly mount.
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