The federal prison in Littleton has largely refused to properly screen staff or broadly test inmates for COVID-19, employees there say, ignoring federal guidance despite repeated pleas from the union that represents the facility’s workers.

The result, those workers said, is the largely unchecked spread of the virus in the sort of setting that has been a hotbed for outbreaks for nearly two years.

Inmates at FCI Englewood have to “beg and plead” to get tested, one union official said, and he alleged that the understaffed, in-house medical team had told some symptomatic inmates that they just have allergies. Personnel are told to self-screen when entering the facility, despite federal policy calling for “enhanced screening.”

The vast majority of the understaffed workforce doesn’t use the thermometer in the entrance, officials said, providing another entry point for the virus.

In response to a message seeking comment for this story, the Federal Bureau of Prisons said it would begin requiring enhanced screening for anyone entering the facility — the kind that employees say they’ve sought for months — beginning Friday, Jan. 28. 

“The whole pandemic response plan has failed, it just hasn’t been enforced,” said Chris Janssen, the vice president of the local American Federation of Government Employees union representing the prison’s staff. “We’re just seeing a second round of COVID coming through the prison.”

Englewood prison was the site of the largest federal prison COVID-19 outbreaks in the country last year. Now, inmates aren’t being tested on any significant level, three union officials who work in the prison said, despite Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance suggesting broad-scale testing and Bureau of Prisons policy requiring that inmates be tested “when they are symptomatic, asymptomatic but exposed, during movements, and when surveillance is needed.” 

The level of mitigation controls in a prison depends in part on the level of spread within the broader community. Englewood’s status is at level three, the highest level of modification under the bureau’s pandemic-response plan.

A message sent to FCI Englewood was not returned this week. The Bureau of Prison declined an interview request.

In response to an email about the allegations made by prison employees, the bureau said in a statement that wardens have “final authority” to “tailor and apply restrictions in accordance with CDC guidance” and based on data from their facility. It said the agency is using “mass testing,” as well as specific testing on symptomatic inmates, to monitor the virus, and that infected inmates are isolated and given appropriate treatment.

The three union employees, who had seen a similar statement sent to another media outlet, said the bureau’s comments were not reflective of what’s happening in Englewood. They said testing has been limited for inmates, symptomatic inmates remain in the general population and untested, and screening for employees is essentially voluntary.

The local American Federation of Government Employees union representing the prison personnel has raised concerns with Warden J.F. Williams for months, said union president James Simmerman. Last weekend, Simmerman met with Williams and the bureau’s regional director. Simmerman said the regional official told Williams to follow federal policy on screening and testing. That still hasn’t happened, Simmerman said.

“If you don’t test, you can’t show that you have an outbreak,” said David Dollard, the chief steward for the union.

Simmerman said the facility tested 70 inmates this week after an inmate was sent to a local hospital with COVID-19 and pneumonia. Bureau of Prisons data indicates 18 inmates — out of a population of just over 1,000 — are currently ill with COVID-19. The union officials flatly rejected that number.

The hospitalized inmate “had been (in that housing unit) with symptoms for over a week,” Simmerman said. “Those test results are pending, but the numbers the (Bureau of Prisons) is representing are massively deflated to the reality.”

Even without testing, the evidence of an outbreak is apparent when walking through the housing units, Simmerman and Janssen said.

“There’s a lot of inmates that are sick in here,” Janssen said. “We’re seeing the simple symptoms of sneezing, watery eyes, stuff like that. And the inmates are telling us that medical is telling them that they just have allergies. So the inmates are like, ‘No I don’t believe that, I want a test.'”

In its statement, the bureau said it was “using critical testing tools to help mitigate the spread of the virus and continues to provide testing for COVID-19 symptomatic inmates, as well as mass testing or serial testing when indicated,” per CDC guidance.

That guidance indicates that all inmates should be tested in a housing unit where one inmate has tested positive. If there are infections in multiple areas of the prison, the entire facility should be tested, as happened at Englewood last year, when it had its large outbreak.

Janssen said infections are not isolated to one area in the prison. He said there are about 70 inmates on a “range,” which is essentially a housing unit. Recently, two or three inmates on a range may test positive and be put in isolation, he said, but prior to this week, none of those infections had sparked broader testing.

Because prison personnel live in and interact with the broader community, they carry the largest potential to bring the virus into the facility. The bureau said in its statement that effective Friday, “staff, contractors, and other visitors to (Englewood) must undergo a screening and temperature check by a staff member wearing appropriate (protective gear) prior to entering the facility, with those who register a temperature of 100.4° Fahrenheit or higher denied access to the building.”

The union officials said they’ve been asking for that level of screening for months and that Williams, the warden, has ignored those requests. No staff member has been dispatched to conduct the screenings, Janssen and Simmerman confirmed Friday. Simmerman said the bureau’s message was misleading and that anything short of a 24-hour staffer doing consistent screenings would be inadequate.

Employees have for months been told to take their own temperature upon walking into the facility; nearly all of the personnel don’t self-screen when they arrive at Englewood, Dollard said. Tests are not provided for staff on-site: Personnel must get tested elsewhere.

Because of the current rate of spread in the area, the prison is supposed to “implement daily COVID-19 symptom screen and temp check prior to entry into the institution,” according to the plan posted to Englewood’s website. CDC guidance also calls for facilities to “ensure” that there is “verbal screening and temperature checks for all staff daily on entry.”

The facility’s corrections officers are staffed at below 70%, Dollard said. Mandatory overtime is frequent, and any guard who calls in sick is putting a colleague in line for an additional eight hour shift. The situation is concerning enough that four members of Congress – Colorado Reps. Ed Perlmutter, Joe Neguse, Jason Crow and Diana DeGette – sent a letter to Michael Carvajal, the director of the bureau, and Kiran Ahuja, who heads the federal Office of Personnel Management, urging them to pay the Englewood staffers more.

“We’ve become concerned as these shortages cause low morale and fatigue,” the congresspeople wrote in a letter dated Friday, “especially as Correctional officers are forced to work additional shifts multiple times a week with little to no advance notification.”

Medical personnel are also understaffed, Janssen said. In its statement, the bureau wrote that Englewood “has an ample number of trained medical personnel” to provide a variety of services to inmates, including those infected with COVID-19.

“The staff morale is the lowest I’ve seen in the 19 years I’ve worked for the bureau,” Dollard said.

Inmates, he said, “are bearing with it.”