El Paso County Jail Has First COVID-19 Inmate Death

Cluster. It's a weird word, and it can be kinda gross. But we're hearing a lot of it here in 2020 in reference to COVID-19 and clusters of the outbreak. They legitimately have 'cluster reports.'

The most recent 'cluster report' from The Department of Public Health said that there was one reported death among 538 positive COVID-19 tests for those being detained in the detention facilities. Before this, there had been no deaths reported within the detention centers. The one death in the El Paso County system was a 59-year-old man, Vicente Rodriguez, who had been held since June of 2018 on charges of aggravated sexual assault of a child.

There are four main detention centers in El Paso:

• The Immigration and Customs and Enforcement El Paso Processing Center
• The Rogelio Sanchez State Jail
• The El Paso County Jail
• The Jail Annex

It has also been reported but ICE that at the El Paso Processing Center, 164 detainees had tested positive for COVID-19. Counties only need to report the active cases, according to the Texas Commission on Jail Standards. Here are some other numbers to wrap your head around.

• 241 COVID-19 cases among inmates at Rogelio Sanchez State Jail, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
• 67 active COVID-19 cases as of this week int eh El Paso County jails.

I know, it's a lot of numbers and we aren't really sure what they all mean. But remember, the important numbers when it comes to COVID-19 are the hospitalizations. Deaths are important as well, but the hospitalizations are crucial for a few different reasons, including the fact that those numbers mean less hospital beds for other sick people.