Akash V. Mehta reports at New York Focus about the state's lack of efforts to prevent COVID-19 spread in prisons. Tranelle Drake packaged hand sanitizer up to 15 hours a day inside the Great Meadow Correctional Facility, “It’s just disgusting,” he said. “You have birds that fly around in here all day. Pee and feces all over the floors, and the radiators—the heat’s barely on while it’s freezing out. You got broken windows all through it. It’s filthy. The officers walk around without masks on, and when they do have them, it’s around their neck. They don’t give you the proper cleaning supplies to be able to clean your cell,” he said. Alexander Horwitz, executive director of New Yorkers United for Justice, explains how inmates are treated. “You show me a Covid best practice, and I’ll show you a place that DOCCS has failed,” Horwitz said. “There isn’t another area of life in New York where mass testing hasn’t been the standard. There is no other population that is in general poor health and confined to congregate settings that has not been prioritized for vaccines. There is no other type of congregate setting that we have not tried to thin out in terms of density, whether we’re talking about schools, care facilities, hospitals.” Tracie Gardner, a vice president at the Legal Action Center who also served as a health official in the Cuomo administration, points out similarities with the way the administration of Gov. Andrew Cuomo handled COVID-19 in nursing homes. “I suspect there will be a similar kind of finding,” Gardner said. “Just as negligent and politically motivated as they were around the nursing homes numbers, it’s going to be the same thing with prisons.” A spokesperson for the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision defended their COVID-19 actions. “Every facet of the state’s response to the COVID-19 outbreak has been guided by facts, scientific data, and the guidance of public health experts at [the state health department] and the CDC, and the work of DOCCS to protect the safety of New York’s incarcerated population is no different,” a DOCCS spokesperson said in a statement. Read more about this story at New York Focus.