Inclusive health: modeling COVID-19 in correctional facilities and communities
This article has been Reviewed by the following groups
Listed in
- Evaluated articles (ScreenIT)
Abstract
Background
Mass incarceration, commonly associated with overcrowding and inadequate health resources for incarcerated people, creates a fertile environment for the spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in U.S. correctional facilities. The exact role that correctional facilities play in enhancing COVID-19 spread and enabling community re-emergence of COVID-19 is unknown.
Methods
We constructed a novel stochastic model of COVID-19 transmission to estimate the impact of correctional facilities, specifically jails and state prisons, for enhancing disease transmission and enabling disease re-emergence in local communities. Using our model, we evaluated scenarios of testing and quarantining infected incarcerated people at 0.0, 0.5, and 1.0 times the rate that occurs for infected people in the community for population sizes of 5, 10, and 20 thousand people.
Results
Our results illustrate testing and quarantining an incarcerated population of 800 would reduce the probability of a major outbreak in the local community. In addition, testing and quarantining an incarcerated population would prevent between 10 to 2640 incidences of COVID-19 per year, and annually save up to 2010 disability-adjusted life years, depending on community size.
Conclusions
Managing COVID-19 in correctional facilities is essential to mitigate risks to community health, and thereby stresses the importance of improving the health standards of incarcerated people.
Article activity feed
-
-
SciScore for 10.1101/2021.02.05.21251174: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:For instance, data on the contacts between people in correctional facilities and the local community are limited, although such limitations typically do not impede the widespread use of stochastic models in the study of disease transmission. We also do not account for the declining number of people in correctional facilities prior to the …
SciScore for 10.1101/2021.02.05.21251174: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:For instance, data on the contacts between people in correctional facilities and the local community are limited, although such limitations typically do not impede the widespread use of stochastic models in the study of disease transmission. We also do not account for the declining number of people in correctional facilities prior to the pandemic (22), nor the myriad decarceration policies that occurred once the pandemic was underway. Furthermore, with regards to the policies of testing and quarantining of infectious individuals, our model assumes that these occur simultaneously, and does not account for the fact that their separate combination, through actions such as contact tracing and targeting at-risk persons, would likely save even more lives and mitigate disease spread further. Similarly, with regards to mitigating disease spread, our model assumes a standard population density in a correctional facility, whereas, not all correctional facilities have the same layout, particularly as it relates to housing for incarcerated people. While dormitories and cells are the most common types of housing units, the availability and use of these spaces can vary considerably across facilities. Others (23, 24) have found evidence that the type of facility housing matters, and that people housed in dormitories are more susceptible to contracting the virus. As such, future models would do well to incorporate information on the varied population densities within correctional housing spa...
Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
-
