The Mohave County Adult Detention Facility continues to monitor the COVID-19 situation and with the confirmed positive cases now in Mohave County, changes have taken place with some of the jail operations. Some inmates have been re-housed in another area of the facility and new bookings will experience a quarantine.
Jail and medical staff had previously identified several current inmates that were considered high risk based on their age and health issues. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has stated that older adults and people of any age who have serious underlying medical conditions might be at a higher risk for severe illness from the corona virus.

“To be clear, there are no confirmed cases of the virus in the jail. The changes going into effect are precautionary measures to reduce the amount of contact these high risk inmates have during the course of the day,” said Sheriff Doug Schuster. The housing changes resulted in a situation that these high risk inmates are now in a group of a dozen or more as opposed to 50 or more.
Captain Bischoff said, “We would like people to have a better understanding of some of the terms that may be used with regard to isolation and quarantine. As explained by the CDC, Isolation separates sick people with a contagious disease from people who are not sick. Quarantine separates and restricts the movement of people who were exposed to a contagious disease to see if they become sick.”

Re-housing these few inmates resulted in a reverse-isolation situation, so they were less likely to be exposed to someone who was sick or contagious, but had not yet been identified as such. The daily routine for those in reverse-isolation will largely remain the same and there will be no loss of basic privileges, like phone, visitation, commissary and other items.
The other protocol will place those newly booked arrestees who will stay in jail following their initial court appearance, under quarantine whether we know there were exposed or not prior to coming into custody. “We are not going to rely on the inmate knowing if they were exposed, we’ll just assume they were to error on the side of safety. Once they clear the quarantine they will then be given a housing assignment with other inmates already in custody. Sheriff Schuster is committed to taking necessary action to ensure the safety of the inmates and staff who are in his jail”, said Bischoff.