Clarke, Mattea and Devlin, John and Conroy, Emmett and Kelly, Enda and Sturup-Toft, Sunita (2020) Establishing prison-led contact tracing to prevent outbreaks of COVID-19 in prisons in Ireland. Journal of Public Health, 42, (3), pp. 519-522.
External website: https://academic.oup.com/jpubhealth/advance-articl...
BACKGROUND
Preventing transmission of COVID-19 within prisons is both important and challenging. The confined conditions in prisons can encourage person-to-person spread with the potential for outbreaks occurring. Contact tracing is an important contributor to the longer-term management strategy for COVID-19 in prisons as well as in the community but is highly resource-intensive. This paper describes the approach to contact tracing taken by the Irish Prison Service (IPS).
METHODS
The IPS National Infection Control Team, in collaboration with the National Quality Improvement (QI) team and Health Service Executive (HSE) in Ireland, implemented a programme to develop and train in-prison contact tracing teams (CTTs). CTTs were run by prison staff with experience of working with detainees, prison IT systems and CCTV. Protocols for undertaking contact tracing for both detainee and staff cases of COVID-19 were established.
RESULTS
All prisons, and two support agencies, within the IPS now have fully functional in-prison CTTs. Every CTT has responded to at least one case COVID-19, undertaken contact tracing and instigated quarantine of contacts.
CONCLUSIONS
A partnership approach with development of prison-led CTTs can provide an effective mechanism for contact tracing of COVID-19 cases within the prison setting.
G Health and disease > Disease by cause (Aetiology) > Communicable / infectious disease > Viral disease / infection > Coronavirus (COVID-19)
J Health care, prevention, harm reduction and treatment > Health care programme, service or facility > Prison-based health service
MM-MO Crime and law > Justice system > Correctional system and facility > Prison
T Demographic characteristics > Person in prison (prisoner)
VA Geographic area > Europe > Ireland
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