The Metropolitan Detention Center

Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center is facing a shortage of coronavirus tests, officials acknowledged in documents filed late Wednesday in the Eastern District of New York.

Twelve inmates have been tested in the MDC, which has a population of nearly 1,700 people. Five inmates have had positive results as of Thursday, according to a court-mandated report filed in the Eastern District. At the 700-inmate Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, seven inmates have been tested and five are positive.

In Wednesday's filing, the MDC's quality improvement and infection prevention control officer, who is also a registered nurse, signed a 17-page declaration describing coronavirus prevention measures at the facility.

"MDC continues to work diligently with local health providers, including Quest Diagnostics, to obtain as many COVID-19 tests as possible," the officer wrote. "Because of the shortage of tests, testing is currently reserved for those meeting" certain criteria, including the kind of symptoms the inmate is facing, his potential exposure, whether he is high risk and whether he works in a high-contact role such as food services.

The officer also described a system of isolation and quarantine at the facility. Symptomatic inmates are isolated and may be tested, the officer explained, while asymptomatic inmates with COVID-19 exposure are held in a separate quarantine unit for 14 days. If any inmates in quarantine develop symptoms, they're taken to isolation and the 14-day clock restarts, the officer wrote.

The filing came in response to a Tuesday order from U.S. District Judge Rachel Kovner, who instructed MDC officials to produce information about testing protocols, soap deliveries and inmates' sick calls as part of discovery in a proposed class action suit on behalf of MDC inmates, captioned Chunn v. Edge.

Several records of soap purchases were included in the filing, marked with dates between September 2019 and April 2020. In his declaration, the infection prevention control officer wrote that inmates are supplied with soap even if they don't have money to buy it from the commissary.

Advocates for the MDC inmates, including the lawyers from Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady and the Cardozo School of Law's Civil Rights Clinic involved in this case, have raised concerns about access to soap and other cleaning supplies at the facility. Other coronavirus prevention measures such as physical distancing are also nearly impossible in the detention facilities, they say.

Katie Rosenfeld, a partner at Emery Celli, said she still had questions about conditions at the MDC after reading Wednesday's filings. She and her colleagues are seeking a Rule 30(b)(6) deposition that could resolve some of those questions, she said, including how many inmates and staff have symptoms and how they can request tests.

"I don't think [the declaration] gives a picture of the problem at all, because we don't know the denominator of how many people are sick and should or would be tested … if there was not a shortage of tests," she said.

In a letter also filed late Wednesday, Assistant U.S. Attorney James Cho, who is representing the MDC, explained that officials at the facility were experiencing technical difficulties in downloading electronic sick call requests. Kovner granted a deadline extension to Monday while the MDC resolves the issue.

The sick call records will be filed confidentially, according to a joint letter and protective order approved by Kovner late Wednesday.

The inmates' attorneys are also seeking to send a medical inspector into the MDC, but the details of that process are still being worked out.

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