Nearly All Prisoners At Prison Near Jackson Test Positive For Covid-19 Antibodies

Testing for the Coronavirus in Michigan has been a difficult thing considering the shortages in testing and the availability of which we can get them. The most important reason besides the fact of finding out whether or not someone has Covid-19, is that Coronavirus antibodies are an important sign. It's the antibodies that are crucial to determine whether or not a vaccine could be created to fight the virus.

It's been recently discovered that a prison near Jackson has had quite the amount of inmates who may have had Covid-19. Chris Gautz, the spokesman for the Michigan Department of Corrections has stated that as of May 22nd, 92% of prisoners tested at Parnall Correctional Facility were positive for antibodies. Apparently the department ran tests to check for antibodies in all of their prisoners about two weeks ago. There were 1,248 prisoners tested and out of those, 1,148 tested positive.

Freep reports that 191 prisoners have already tested positive for the virus at Parnall and 10 have already passed away. This was one of the hotbeds of the Coronavirus when the spread originally took place. Still, antibodies are no guarantee that an immunity can be created, but it is a start.

The assistant professor of medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, Dr. Matthew Akiyama, spoke of the normalcy of seeing high numbers in positive antibody testing when infection rates were once also very high:

It usually takes a few weeks to develop an antibody response and now (we're) seeing the consequences of these high infection rates in congregate settings like prisons and jails.