No coronavirus tests have been performed in the past five days at New York City's federal detention facilities, according to a court-mandated report submitted Tuesday in the Eastern District of New York.

At Manhattan's Metropolitan Correctional Center and Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center, 17 inmates have been tested and 10 of those tests came back positive, according to the report.

In an April 2 administrative order, Chief Judge Roslynn Mauskopf said that the reports must be submitted every Tuesday and Thursday to give judges and attorneys consistent information about COVID-19 in the detention facilities. Thursday's report showed that 17 inmates had been tested and eight were positive.

Attorneys representing inmates in the two facilities have criticized the lack of testing, saying that it should not be interpreted to mean that COVID-19 is not spreading. Recommended prevention measures such as physical distancing and meticulous sanitation are often impossible in jail settings, according to advocates.

The number of cases among staff members has increased in each report so far, and that trend continued Tuesday. Thirty-one staff members from the MCC and MDC are sick, compared with 21 on Thursday, according to the reports.

Another judge in the Eastern District of New York has ordered officials at the MDC to report in more detail about coronavirus testing protocols at the facility, where five inmates were reported sick Tuesday.

As part of discovery in a proposed class action suit related to the coronavirus, U.S. District Judge Rachel Kovner ordered MDC officials to submit "documents containing protocols that govern when inmates or staff members are tested for COVID-19 and how a person at the MDC can request such a test" by Wednesday.

During a telephone conference Monday, prosecutors representing MDC Warden Derek Edge said they were already turning over that information in the reports to Mauskopf, but Kovner disagreed.

"Evidence about when the MDC tests for COVID-19 bears on [the MDC's] argument that the small number of positive tests suggests that COVID-19 is not widespread within the facility. That evidence is not currently being disclosed in response to [Mauskopf's order]," Kovner wrote in her order Tuesday.

Kovner also ordered the MDC to turn over information about soap deliveries to the MDC and anonymized sick-call requests from all inmates, with the same Wednesday deadline. She overruled the MDC attorneys' objections that because those requests related to all inmates and not just the named plaintiffs in the case, they were too broad.

The overall availability of soap at the MDC relates to whether the named plaintiffs have soap, Kovner wrote. She added that if the named plaintiffs cannot socially distance from other inmates, then the other inmates' access to soap and medical care is also relevant to the risk the plaintiffs face and their Eighth Amendment claims.

Sick call records may also shed more light on the prevalence of COVID-19 at the MDC, despite the lack of tests, Kovner wrote.

"Evidence of the number of inmates submitting sick-call requests based on symptoms consistent with COVID19 is relevant to assessing the likely prevalence of COVID-19 within a facility where few tests have occurred," she wrote.

Kovner did not address the inmates' attorneys' request to send a medical inspector into the MDC, saying she would rule on it at a later time.

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