A 60th Incarcerated Person Has Died From COVID-19 in Tennessee

A 60th incarcerated person has died from COVID-19 in a Tennessee prison, although current cases in the state's prisons remain low. Seven Tennessee Department of Correction staff members have also died of the illness since the pandemic began. 

The prison with the most deaths is the Lois M. DeBerry Special Needs Facility, where 11 incarcerated people have died. Twenty of the state's deaths have occurred in facilities run by the for-profit prison corporation CoreCivic. The number of deaths still represents a small number of the incarcerated people who have caught COVID — the state's latest data shows that 7,290 incarcerated people have recovered from the illness. 

Vaccination rates in the state's prisons have outpaced those in the general public. In August, prison officials told the Scene that roughly 60 percent of the incarcerated population was fully vaccinated. More recent figures suggest that the number of vaccinations in prisons has continued upward — the number of fully vaccinated Tennesseans is currently at roughly 51 percent.