92 More Montco Correctional Facility Inmates Positive In Retest

MONTGOMERY COUNTY, PA — Officials have conducted a sweeping retest of all Montgomery County Correctional Facility inmates who previously came back negative for coronavirus during the mass testing conducted one month ago. The results showed that about 13 percent of these previously uninfected individuals now have the virus, authorities said, indicating once again how quickly the virus can spread in a closed environment.

The retest, which was conducted on May 21, was given to 718 inmates. A total of 92 of them, or 12.8 percent, were found positive.

That's slightly under the rate of positives that emerged during the first mass testing of the facility conducted on April 23 and 24, when 17 percent of all inmates (172 individuals) tested positive.

In mid-May, one of those individuals that had tested negative in the original mass test began showing symptoms of the virus, authorities said. It's not known how or when that individual contracted the virus.

"This was a trigger for us to retest any inmate who had previously tested negative," Montgomery County Commissioner Val Arkoosh said.

Officials are still awaiting test results from 15 inmates. All staff will also be tested over the coming week, Arkoosh added.

All inmates that have tested positive are in stable condition and are in isolation, and their direct contacts are in quarantine. It's not clear how many are showing symptoms. In the first round of testing, all of the positive individuals were asymptomatic.

The facility's population has dropped from 1,342 to 850 since the pandemic began in mid-March, a 36 percent decrease. Officials have worked to decrease the number of daily admissions from a pre-coronavirus average of 28, to about three or four as of Friday.