Santa Monica Observer - Community, Diversity, Sustainability and other Overused Words

The Covid-19 Omicron is a double edge sword. At present, over 100 CIW staff are out sick. Plunging the institution into a condition we've never seen before. And you see it all here in prison.

So many administration staff have been out sick that inmate accounting was late getting money to prisoners' books. That's how bad this is.

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By now, there are undoubtedly many more than only 16 positive cases of Omicron at CIW

The other edge of this sword is infecting the inmate population and exposing hundreds more. As of Thursday, Jan. 6, I'm now in a quarantined housing unit. We have food and medication delivered to the doors! We've been through this before. But not in a long time.

New CDCR policy. As of Jan. 8th, all prisoners will be provided and required to wear N95 masks for 14 days. This is for all California's CDCR state prison inmates. There will also be a 14 day modified program with minimal programming to "stop the spread". They already passed out these green N95 masks 2 days ago. At the time we were told we did not have to wear them. I knew a policy change was going to follow. It's taken them 2 years to get prisoners N95 masks??

In the mean time, we continue to be tested. The entire CIW population was tested and revealed the 16 positives. Stay tuned.