Fast Facts (Full BOP stats can be found here) Currently positive-testing inmates: 54 (down from 60) Currently positive-testing staff: 148 (down from 150) Recovered inmates currently in the BOP: 52,607 (down from 52,651) Recovered staff: 12,565 (up from 12,559)
Institutions with the largest number of currently positive-testing inmates:
Rochester FMC: 8 (down from 17)
Oklahoma City FTC: 4 (unchanged)
Victorville Medium II FCI: 3 (down from 4)
Institutions with the largest number of currently positive-testing staff:
Central Office HQ: 36 (up from 33)
Victorville Medium I FCI: 13 (unchanged)
Victorville USP: 13 (unchanged)
System-wide testing results: Presently, BOP has 137,058 federal inmates in BOP-managed institutions and 13,333 in community-based facilities. Today's stats: Completed tests: 128,757 (down from 128,770) Positive tests: 55,405 (down from 55,418)
Total vaccine doses administered: 313,603 (up from 313,335)
News Note: Race-based kidney test used by BOP against weight of authority; discriminates against Black inmates seeking release...
A recent article in the New York Times, titled "How a Race-Based Medical Formula Is Keeping Some Black Men in Prison," by Joseph Goldstein, explains that the BOP continues to adjust the kidney-function scores of Black inmates, which presents them as healthier than White inmates with similar scores, even though this adjustment has been widely rejected by the scientific community. On example:
Last month, a federal judge in New Jersey considered the plea of an inmate who claimed his kidney problems made Covid-19 especially dangerous for him. The man, Maurice McPhatter, 49, was one of more than 20,000 federal prisoners who have sought early release during the pandemic. Thousands have been freed through that process.
Mr. McPhatter, who was serving a 10-year sentence for drug trafficking, explained in a handwritten letter that he was born with only one kidney and now had a large kidney stone. Results from a blood test scored Mr. McPhatter’s kidney function as low.
But then the judge, Kevin McNulty, did something that sunk Mr. McPhatter’s chances of early release. The prison medical records contained instructions that kidney test scores for African Americans should be adjusted, using a decades-old formula that drew a distinction between races. Mr. McPhatter is Black, and the resulting “race adjustment” put his score on the healthy side of a commonly used threshold for chronic kidney disease.
“He is at no particular risk of a dangerous Covid infection,” the judge concluded in his decision on March 23, denying Mr. McPhatter’s application.
The article goes on to explain how this adjustment has been debunked and "the formula Judge McNulty used to make his decision has been discarded by a growing number of health care institutions and experts who say it can lead to misdiagnoses and inequitable care for Black patients." The author observes,
The debate over the kidney formula is part of a broader reckoning over the role of race in medicine. The race of patients is incorporated into an array of formulas that doctors use to evaluate data about everything from lung function to whether to recommend C-sections.
Death Watch (Note: The BOP press website announces BOP COVID-related deaths here.) The BOP has identified no new inmate fatalities, leaving the total at 293. Eleven of the inmates died while on home confinement. Staff deaths remain at 7