Fighting COVID-19 Inside Confinement Facilities

Georgia Southern University is stepping up efforts to combat COVID-19. It has partnered with the Georgia Department of Public Health (DPH) to better fight COVID in the state’s jails, prisons and other confinement facilities. The University has established the Institute for Health Logistics & Analytics to manage a new $7.2 million contract along with the Georgia DPH.

The project has two initial purposes. One seeks to improve detection and mitigation of COVID-19 to reduce the risk of transmission among confinement facility staff and residents. The other goal is to reimburse Georgia confinement facilities for costs they incurred from approved COVID-19 mitigation activities implemented under the project.

“COVID-19 disease has been particularly troublesome in confinement facilities, where complete physical separation is impossible and germs are easily spread from person to person in the air or on common surfaces,” said Jessica Schwind, Ph.D., associate professor of epidemiology in Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health and the newly named director of the Institute for Health Logistics & Analytics. “Managers of these facilities have done an admirable job during this pandemic – we are going to help them be more effective through project support.”

Experts estimate that state facilities have spent millions on COVID-19 mitigation efforts such as testing and supplies; personal protective equipment (PPE); reporting, monitoring, analysis expenses associated with meeting resident/detainee/inmate needs resulting from COVID-19-related limited/restricted mobility and/or access to the facility.

This project is supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services through the ELC Detection and Mitigation of COVID-19 in Confinement Facilities Grant Program as part of a financial assistance award to the Georgia Department of Public Health.

The Institute for Health Logistics & Analytics will assist with the review and reimbursement of confinement mitigation projects and expenditures in enrolled facilities across the state of Georgia.