Kansas Prison System Reports 16th Inmate Fatality Tied To COVID

By Tim Carpenter, Kansas Reflector

March 11, 2021

TOPEKA — The Kansas Department of Corrections said Thursday the 16th inmate in the state prison system died after testing positive for COVID-19.

Six of the state’s facilities have endured inmate fatalities during the pandemic, while five employees of the agency assigned to three of the corrections department’s facilities have died. More than 6,000 inmates have tested positive for COVID-19 along with more than 1,200 employees of the system’s 10 facilities.

Corrections officials said a 57-year-old male inmate at Winfield Correctional Facility died Tuesday. The inmate, serving a 130-month sentence for possession and distribution of drugs, tested positive for coronavirus Feb. 3 and admitted to a hospital Feb. 13. It was the second death related to the coronavirus at Winfield.

The Winfield facility has logged two inmate deaths and more than 400 positive tests for the virus. The hotspots with more than 1,000 cases of COVID-19 among prisoners have been Hutchinson Correctional Facility with 1,300, Lansing Correctional Facility with 1,000 and El Dorado Correctional Facility with more than 900 cases.

The prisons at El Dorado, Hutchinson, Lansing, Norton and Topeka have had in excess of 100 cases of COVID-19 among employees.

In terms of active cases of COVID-19, the corrections department reported a dozen among employees and more than two dozen among inmates.