A 69-year-old man incarcerated at Lois M. DeBerry Special Needs Facility in Nashville died last week after testing positive for COVID-19. He is the third incarcerated person at the prison in less than a month to die after contracting the disease.
According to the Tennessee Department of Correction’s database on COVID-19 in the state’s prisons — which has not been updated since Aug. 13 — 19 prisoners at DeBerry are currently infected and 147 are still waiting on test results. Nine prisoners have died across the state since the beginning of the pandemic.
As of last week, there were 58 incarcerated people testing positive for COVID-19. The state does not regularly release the number of staff who have tested positive.
The department has said that the vast majority of prisoners who contracted the virus have been asymptomatic. The state started mass testing in prisons in May, revealing two of the worst COVID-19 hot spots in the country.
