To help reduce the risk of a coronavirus outbreak among our inmate residents, the Newton County Jail will follow the Pandemic Response Plan approved by our correctional facility and the corporate medical officer of NaphCare, a correctional healthcare service for inmates.

Our correctional facilities’ intake officers and nursing staff will work together in the pre-booking areas to screen individuals for a cough, shortness of breath and/or fever prior to acceptance. In addition, our staff will mask individuals who have a higher risk for infection and transmission as well as quarantine the individuals showing symptoms of an infection.

During the screening process, our staff will ask a serious of questions to evaluate whether an individual has come in contact with the infection. Our staff will ask the individual whether he or she traveled outside of the country, has knowledge of any type of contact with an infectious individual or has a history of an infectious disease. 

For those inmate residents who show symptoms while in custody, our correctional facility will utilize the negative pressure rooms for quarantine purposes. Gwinnett and DeKalb counties have informed us of additional quarantine units we can utilize, if necessary.

Our correctional facility has done the following thus far to reduce the spread of disease among our inmate residents, staff and visitors:

• Suspended contact visitation for all groups (not including visitation through glass window)
• Requested test kits from BioReference Laboratories
• Gloves, masks, gowns and eyewear are to be worn by laundry workers 
• Common areas are cleaned more than twice a day 
• Glass windows in the visitation area are cleaned after every visit