PEORIA -- Two employees who work at the Peoria County Jail have tested positive for COVID-19.
But it doesn’t appear that any inmates have been infected by the new coronavirus, says the county’s top lawman.
Sheriff Brian Asbell said the employees are now at home in isolation for 14 days. Two other corrections officers as well as one sheriff’s deputy are also at home under quarantine, per health department and CDC guidelines, because they were exposed to the affected employees.
″(The initial two) were exhibiting signs of illness which were consistent with a lot of characteristics of COVID-19. They had symptoms, they got tested and they came back positive,” the sheriff said.
A sixth employee, a corrections officer, is also off work because of what’s believed to be an unrelated exposure, the sheriff said. When asked how the employees were exposed, the sheriff said they were investigating.
“We are working with the health department to do contact tracing to determine a source. At this time, there are no confirmed cases of inmates who have been infected. We are continually monitoring this as they are an at-risk population,” he said.
This is the first instance of Peoria County employees being infected during the four months the COVID-19 virus has wreaked havoc across the globe. So far, no police officers from the city of Peoria have been infected, said a department spokeswoman.
Tony Ardis, the city’s fire chief, said one firefighter had tested positive about a month ago, was asymptomatic and has since tested negative and returned to work.
When asked what the impact on his office would be, Asbell was blunt.
“We have been lucky so far during these four months,” he said. “We are trying to manage a health pandemic in a congruent living community with a 30% personnel cut.
“I just don’t have the resources,” he said.
The loss of these six for at least 14 days, as the test came back just this week, means Asbell might have to bring back, at least temporarily, some of the people he furloughed to help the county balance its budget.
That, coupled with the state continuing to refuse to take prisoners into its state prison system, means the population of the jail is rising, and more pods have to be opened up, he said. That requires more staff, which means he’s losing any savings he might have had.
One way to offset that might be to close the jail intake for a few hours each day. That mean would mean arresting agencies like Peoria and others wouldn’t be able to drop off prisoners except during certain hours.
Amy Dotson, a Peoria police spokeswoman, said there were no plans for the city to change its operations at this time, given the positive tests at the jail. Article by: Andy Kravetz
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