COVID-19 in Alaska prisons forces cutoff of visitation and some services

Three prisons in Alaska have suspended visitation and cut back services due to recent COVID-19 infections inside the facilities.

Ketchikan Correction Complex and Spring Creek Correctional Center in Seward as well as Hiland Mountain Correctional Center, a women’s prison in Eagle River, have also stopped allowing family visits, though attorney visits are still permitted.

The Department of Corrections has also “curtailed movement and services ... in order to conduct COVID contact tracing and testing,” Betsy Holley, a spokeswoman for the department, wrote in an email Thursday.

The state’s largest reported COVID-19 outbreak last year occurred when hundreds of inmates at Goose Creek Correctional Center tested positive in December.

By the end of July, 57% of Alaska inmates were fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, Holley wrote.