Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er (Ag) Den­nis Pul­chan said a COVID Com­mand Cen­tre has been es­tab­lished at Gold­en Grove to gath­er and process all in­for­ma­tion re­quired to aid in de­ci­sion mak­ing, in an ef­fort to ef­fec­tive­ly man­age the con­tain­ment of COVID-19 with­in the walls of the na­tion’s pris­ons.

Pul­chan said dai­ly re­ports from every sta­tion are manda­to­ry and are to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion in­clu­sive of, but not lim­it­ed to, staff at­ten­dance and sta­tus, en­hanced pris­on­er ob­ser­va­tion, san­i­ti­za­tion meth­ods and fre­quen­cies.

Pul­chan who heads the Cen­tre, ex­plained that sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness dur­ing this time is detri­men­tal to how re­spons­es are co­or­di­nat­ed. As such, out­lets of com­mu­ni­ca­tion were es­tab­lished specif­i­cal­ly for the pur­pose of re­lat­ing of COVID-19 sit­u­a­tions.

Com­mis­sion­er Pul­chan added that all charges are con­stant­ly mon­i­tored for any signs and symp­toms and test­ing have been per­formed on those dis­play­ing any signs and symp­toms. To date, on­ly two pris­on­ers have test­ed pos­i­tive and all the nec­es­sary pro­to­cols have been ob­served.

He ad­vised that en­hanced mea­sures were im­ple­ment­ed to min­i­mize the spread of the virus.

Pul­chan said since the in­tro­duc­tion of com­mu­ni­ty spread, mem­bers of staff have been ad­vised against re­port­ing for du­ty and to seek med­ical at­ten­tion if feel­ing un­well.

In­evitably, he said, some of­fi­cers have re­turned pos­i­tive re­sults while a num­ber of them are un­der quar­an­tine.

The Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er has re­mind­ed mem­bers of the pub­lic that the com­mis­sary re­mains func­tion­al for pur­chas­es and vir­tu­al vis­its con­tin­ue.