Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er Den­nis Pul­chan has re­vealed that they are now fac­ing a ma­jor chal­lenge as some 28 prison of­fi­cers have test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19, forc­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion to place an­oth­er 231 of­fi­cers in quar­an­tine.

Speak­ing to host Na­talee Legore on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, Pul­chan said hav­ing so many of­fi­cers out of ac­tive du­ty had put a strain on the re­sources.

Pul­chan said luck­i­ly, there are 300 new re­cruits tak­ing up the shifts and sup­ple­ment­ing any short­ages. How­ev­er, he said air­ing time for in­mates has been af­fect­ed as they are now con­fined to their cells to re­duce move­ment.

He said the Prison Ser­vice is tak­ing all pre­cau­tions when it comes to mit­i­gat­ing the spread of the virus. This en­tails col­lect­ing da­ta in re­al-time through its new­ly-es­tab­lished com­mand cen­tre, which mon­i­tors in­mates and of­fi­cers dai­ly.

The cen­tre was set up last week at the Gold­en Grove Prison and dai­ly re­ports from every sta­tion are manda­to­ry to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion, in­clu­sive of staff at­ten­dance and sta­tus, en­hanced pris­on­er ob­ser­va­tion, sani­ti­sa­tion meth­ods and fre­quen­cies.

Pul­chan, who heads the cen­tre, said all pris­on­ers are con­stant­ly mon­i­tored for any signs and symp­toms and test­ing has been per­formed on those dis­play­ing any signs and symp­toms. He re­mind­ed mem­bers of the pub­lic that the com­mis­sary re­mains func­tion­al for pur­chas­es for pris­on­ers and vir­tu­al vis­its con­tin­ue.