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Litigation Continues Around Tulare County Jail’s Pandemic Response – COVID-19 Update For Mar. 5

Tulare County Sheriff's Office

 

Slowly and steadily, COVID-19 is loosening its grip on the San Joaquin Valley. New cases are dropping, intensive care units are becoming less impacted, and every day, thousands more people are being vaccinated against the virus.

Simultaneously, the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office is facing ongoing litigation surrounding its response to the pandemic in the county jail. Following a lawsuit in July that alleged the jail wasn’t allowing incarcerated people to wear masks or visit with attorneys, a supplemental complaint filed last week by lawyers with the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California alleges the jail’s social distancing policy amounts to cruel and unusual punishment by confining inmates to their cells for upwards of 23 hours per day.

This week’s COVID-19 update walks through the week’s biggest vaccine headlines as well as the latest in that lawsuit, featuring excerpts from interviews with Dylan Verner-Crist, a policy investigator with the ACLU of Northern California, and plaintiffs Charles Criswell and Samuel Camposeco.

Meanwhile, here’s a snapshot for Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera, Mariposa, Merced, and Tulare Counties (note that some numbers may have changed between the interview and publication):

As of March 4:

As of 1 week previous, Feb. 25:

As of 4 weeks previous, Feb. 4:

You can always find up-to-date information for your county here.

Kerry Klein is an award-winning reporter whose coverage of public health, air pollution, drinking water access and wildfires in the San Joaquin Valley has been featured on NPR, KQED, Science Friday and Kaiser Health News. Her work has earned numerous regional Edward R. Murrow and Golden Mike Awards and has been recognized by the Association of Health Care Journalists and Society of Environmental Journalists. Her podcast Escape From Mammoth Pool was named a podcast “listeners couldn’t get enough of in 2021” by the radio aggregator NPR One.
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