Reality Winner (Michael Holahan/The Augusta Chronicle via AP)

Reality Winner, the first person prosecuted by the Trump administration for leaking to the media, has tested positive for COVID-19.

Winner's sister, Brittany Winner, confirmed her sister's positive test Monday. Reality Winner, who is housed at the Federal Medical Center-Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas, notified her sister by email, adding that a prison guard "congratulated" her on the result, Brittany Winner said.

Winner tested positive for the virus as her emergency appeal seeking a compassionate release from FMC-Carswell remains pending at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.

Last month, the Eleventh Circuit agreed to hear an expedite appeal of a trial court ruling denying Winner compassionate release. Winner has said preexisting health conditions make her especially susceptible to COVID-19, and asked to serve the remainder of her sentence at home.

Winner has served 37 months of a 63-month sentence for espionage after she provided a single page of classified information to online publication The Intercept in 2017 on Russian efforts to hack state election systems in the run-up to the 2016 election.

Federal prosecutors in Georgia's Southern District have fought to keep Winner in custody.  A spokesman for U.S. Attorney Bobby Christine of the Southern District of Georgia declined to comment.

Winner's attorney, Joe Whitley, a Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz partner and former general counsel for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, first sought Winner's release last April after COVID-19 began spreading rapidly through the nation's prisons and surfaced at FMC-Carswell.

U.S. District Chief Judge Randal Hall rejected Winner's petition, ruling that the U.S. Bureau of Prisons had sole authority to determine whether Winner qualified to complete her sentence in home confinement and that she had not exhausted her administrative remedies with the agency. Hall went on to say that even if he did have authority to commute Winner's sentence because of extraordinary circumstances associated with the spread of COVID-19 and her prior medical conditions, he wouldn't do so.

On Monday, Whitley said he previously informed the Eleventh Circuit of the FMC-Carswell COVID-19 outbreak. He said that when he first sought compassionate release for Winner, the prison had reported a single case.

When the Eleventh Circuit agreed to hear Winner's appeal, 46 inmates and five staff at the prison, which houses medically vulnerable women, had tested positive for the virus and one inmate had already died. Whitley filed a supplemental brief earlier this month reporting more than 80 COVID cases at FMC-Carswell. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported last week that number had grown to 130, before Winner received her positive result.

"We hope that the Eleventh Circuit would evaluate the situation de novo and permit Reality to serve the balance of her sentence in home confinement," Whitley said Monday. "She fits all the parameters that have been set by the Bureau of Prisons for release. It serves no real purpose to have her confined any longer, given the incidence of COVID at Carswell. … I hope the BOP is equipped to handle the geometric surge in cases, effectively at all their facilities, but I am concerned that may not be the case."

Brittany Winner said that one of Winner's three cell mates was removed after testing positive. She said her sister and her cell mates were confined to their cell for three weeks without exercise before her positive COVID-19 test. Reality Winner currently is asymptomatic, her sister said. But she added that because Texas "has been pretty hard hit" with COVID-19 cases, "We're not confident that if she does come down with severe symptoms of COVID-19 that she will receive adequate medical care."