Montco Not Considering Vaccine Mandate For Corrections Staff

MONTGOMERY COUNTY, PA — Isolated environments like prisons are especially vulnerable to the impacts of the growing delta variant threat, analysts in Pennsylvania warn, as county correctional facilities are seeing their most significant case surges in months.

That includes the Montgomery County Correctional Facility, which saw 18 new cases over a recent seven-day period in August, according to the watchdog Pennsylvania Prison Society, which has advocated for lowering incarceration rates since the pandemic began.

"The jail outbreaks have brought renewed attention to the issue of requiring vaccinations for staff, who come and go daily from communities where the delta variant is surging," the Society said in a dispatch last week.

The Society reports that less less than one in four of all prison staff in Pennsylvania have been vaccinated. Montgomery County is doing much better than the average on this front: the county says that 229 staff members have been vaccinated out of a total of 325.

Still, that leaves nearly 100 unvaccinated. A spokesperson for Montgomery County told Patch that the county is not presently considering mandating the vaccine for corrections staff. Counties like York, Lehigh, and Northampton have publicly said something similar.

Other counties, however, are taking steps in the direction of some kind of mandate. Bucks County, which saw 47 new cases in county jail over a week period, is considering a mandate, while Allegheny County (83 cases in one week) adopted a "vaccine or test" policy earlier in August. All new hires must be vaccinated, and all employees who are not vaccinated must be tested weekly.

The concern comes as case rates in Montgomery County and much of Pennsylvania continue to steadily rise. The county's positivity rate now sits at 4.67 percent, it's highest mark since May, and it has steadily risen since July.

The Prison Society cited Salmaan Keshavjee, a professor of global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School, who pointed to increased vaccination rates, virus-killing UV lights, and more social distancing as key to keeping cases low in prisons. Most important, however, is reducing prison populations.

"That is an immediate way to lower the number of people an infected person could infect," Keshavjee said.

The entirety of Montgomery County Correctional Facility, including all inmates and staff, has been tested for the virus on numerous occasions since the pandemic began.