Coronavirus: prison overcrowding, cause of virus spread in Colombia

Text by: RFI Follow

Overcrowded prisons in Latin America are Covid-19 traps. Villavicencio prison, at the foot of the Andes mountain range in Colombia, breaks the absolute record with 772 cases recorded on May 8, including around 40 guards. According to official sources, there were only three deaths.

Publicity

From our correspondent in Bogota ,  Marie-Eve Detoeuf

In Villavicencio, prisoners sleep on top of each other, sometimes in the corridors. The establishment planned for 900 detainees accommodates 1,750. Prison overcrowding in Colombia is 51%. In Villavicencio, it reaches 95%. Under these conditions, it is impossible to isolate patients.

In mid-April, the government issued a decree to allow the release of prisoners over the age of 60, chronically ill or in pre-trial detention.

The risk of contagion denounced

But the implementation of the text is not without difficulties. One of the thirteen prisoners released last week in Villavicencio was diagnosed with Covid-19 two days after his release. The municipal authorities and the population, which was already concerned about the release of convicts, are now denouncing the risk of contagion.

The situation is so serious that the Constitutional Court ruled on Thursday, May 7. The magistrates gave three weeks to the director of the prison of Villavicencio and to the justice so that the prisoners likely to be released are.

►Read also: In Colombia, confinement is hitting the working-class neighborhoods of Bogota hard 

Our selection on the coronavirus

• Listen to our daily chronicle  Coronavirus info

• The practical questions  :
→  What is known about the mode of contagion
→  disparities and inequalities in coronaviruses: what to remember
→  What outcomes for clinical trials?
→  A vaccine, the only solution to stem the pandemic?
→  How to make a mask and use it well

• Our series  : "  The response, country by country  "

• Each evening, find the State of the world and Africa facing the pandemic

• See also the files of RFI Savoirs on the Covid-19:
→  Birth of a pandemic
→  Everyday life put to the test
→  The history of epidemics
→  Science facing the Covid-19
→  The geopolitical consequences

Newsletter With the Daily Newsletter, find the headlines directly in your mailbox

Follow all international news by downloading the RFI application

• Coronavirus
• Colombia

On the same subject

Confinement in Colombia hits hard working areas of Bogota

Coronavirus: in Colombia, strong social tensions in Medellin against a background of confinement

Coronavirus: Venezuelan refugees leave Colombia to return to the country