May 14--Visiting can resume on Friday at California prisons, because the H1N1 flu has turned out to be milder than initially feared, corrections and prison health officials said Wednesday.
The state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation largely deferred to the special office charged with overseeing prison health care in reaching the decision, said Scott Kernan, the department's undersecretary.
The decision comes eight days after the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that schools no longer needed to be closed because some students had the swine flu. On May 5, the CDC said the novel influenza strain was too mild to warrant further school closures.
Prisons aren't like the schools because inmates are closely packed together around the clock, said Dr. Dwight Winslow, acting chief medical officer for the California Prison Health Care Services, which oversees inmate health care in the wake of federal court decisions.
"The potential for rapid transmission is much, much greater," he said. Prison health officials decided to allow visiting to resume after seeing the flu had not spread widely, but there was no single factor leading to the decision, Winslow said, just "common sense" medical judgment.
During the visiting suspension, the prison system had to postpone its special "Get on the Bus" program, an annual event that helps children visit their relatives around the time of Mother's Day. That event now is scheduled for June 26 at three women's facilities.
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Call The Bee's Carrie Peyton Dahlberg, (916) 321-1086.
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