![]() ![]() “You don’t need to worry so much about transmitting to each other because if you don’t have any symptoms really there is pretty much no risk of that,” she said erroneously. So, we are wearing masks not because we are necessarily sick, very few of us have any symptoms of any kind.” We’re the ones who are bringing stuff from the outside world and we’re putting you at risk. “You are in a locked-down environment, that means you are protected actually from the outside world. “You’re in a safe environment right now,” Waldura told detainees on the video. In the video, which was obtained through a public records request, Waldura also ignored the danger posed by asymptomatic carriers and advised detainees that wearing masks was unnecessary. Some people have no symptoms at all, and those people who are infected with it tend to recover very quickly with no problems.” On March 27, as concerns spread within the jail, the sheriff’s office started showing an educational video to jail detainees featuring Waldura, in which she said, “Most people who have COVID-19 have a very mild illness. Meanwhile, a Wellpath administrator went home with a 100-degree temperature. But by the time the sheriff’s office issued a statement, internal company communications show that Wellpath had discovered that the nurse may not have used a mask consistently and then put the housing unit under quarantine. ![]() In its initial statement, the sheriff’s office said the nurse used a mask at all times, so it was not necessary to quarantine the housing unit. ![]() The housing unit where the nurse worked was not locked down until a day later. The jail’s first documented COVID-19 case was a Wellpath nurse who tested positive on March 25. It didn’t start taking the temperature of everyone who entered the jail until March 17, the same day as a countywide shelter-in-place order took effect. But Santa Rita was slow to implement some basic safety measures. For-profit medical providers, and Wellpath in particular, have been accused of negligent care.Īs the coronavirus pandemic spread in early 2020, Wellpath prepared by developing an Outbreak Control Master Plan for Santa Rita Jail, which was approved March 9 by Waldura and administrator Jen Diaz. According to its website, Wellpath handles health care at nearly 400 jails nationwide and more than 140 state and federal prisons. Health care in Santa Rita Jail is provided by Wellpath, a for-profit company with an estimated $1.5 billion in annual revenue that is owned by the private equity firm HIG Capital. Wellpath was slow to implement CDC guidance in the early days of the pandemic Most recently, Santa Rita had an outbreak affecting 28 staffers that started after a Wellpath nurse who spread misinformation about vaccines tweeted that she had contracted the virus. But there have been 659 confirmed cases in Santa Rita since the start of the pandemic, and the jail had outbreaks again in December and January. There have not been any deaths in the jail from COVID-19, and it appears to have so far avoided a massive outbreak like in San Quentin State Prison last year, when the virus infected more than 2,000 prisoners. While the jail later on improved its response under pressure from a federal judge, it still had a large outbreak that summer, just a few weeks before Waldura was fired. But internal company documents show that the directions in the plan and CDC guidance were not consistently followed in the jail’s early response to the pandemic. In the first few months of the pandemic, Waldura was in charge of shaping the jail’s outbreak control plan, a detailed document that guided Santa Rita’s procedures to control the spread of COVID-19. Overall Kelly said Wellpath has done an “outstanding job” during the pandemic and Waldura “is just one piece of an operation-she’s not going to stop the machine from moving.” “I’m told she was replaced and there was no concern over health operations, even during COVID,” Kelly said. ![]() Ray Kelly, a department spokesperson, said that Wellpath did not disclose the reasons for Waldura’s termination to the sheriff’s office as it was a “private personnel matter,” and that the sheriff’s office did not investigate. Judy Lilley, a spokesperson for Wellpath, the jail’s for-profit healthcare provider, confirmed that Waldura is no longer employed by Wellpath but did not respond to questions about whether the former medical director’s drug abuse problems affected Wellpath’s ability to effectively care for its patients, saying it is the company’s policy not to discuss personnel matters publicly.Īlameda County Sheriff’s Sgt. Waldura did not respond to questions sent to her and her attorney. ![]()
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