WHO recommends tightening prison rules to prevent ‘outbreak’

COPENHAGEN: The European branch of the World Health Organisation warned on Monday that the continent’s prisons are particularly vulnerable to coronavirus outbreaks, recommending facilities restrict access to visitors, systematically take temperatures, or institute supervised isolation.

"Efforts to control COVID-19 in the community are likely to fail if strong infection prevention and control (IPC) measures, adequate testing, treatment and care are not carried out in prisons and other places of detention as well," WHO Europe said in a report released on Monday.

Incarcerated people "are likely to be more vulnerable to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak than the general population because of the confined conditions in which they live," the organisation said in its 30-page report.

It recommended, among other things, evaluating whether access for staff and visitors could be restricted, as well taking the temperature of anyone entering a facility.

Within prisons, WHO Europe noted that the "rights of all affected people must be upheld, and all public health measures must be carried out without discrimination of any kind." Any decision to isolate a prisoner must thusly be based on "medical necessity".

WHO Europe, which stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific, includes 53 countries, with diverse members such as Russia and Andorra, Germany and Tajikistan. In late 2019, the organisation warned of the difficulties in access to health care in European prisons, contributing to poor health among inmates.

While the number of prisoners in Europe fell significantly between 2016 and 2018, eight countries, including France, still have "serious problems of prison overcrowding", a Council of Europe study estimated in April 2019.