Crowded Prisons Are Breeding Grounds for COVID-19: Study

TUESDAY, Aug. 10, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- COVID-19 spreads like wildfire through crowded U.S. prisons, and researchers are calling for policy changes to protect inmates.

"We may need to have stricter thresholds for where we draw the line on how crowded a facility can be," study senior author Dr. Amir Mohareb said in a news release from Massachusetts General Hospital, where he is an infectious disease specialist.

Previous studies found that COVID infection rates are significantly higher in prisons than in the general population, but it was unclear to what extent crowding was to blame.