We won't go: California inmates refuse move to safer cells

More than 200 California inmates at the highest risk from coronavirus won’t move to safer cells, confounding officials who want to transfer thousands of prisoners to locations where they are less vulnerable to infection.

The unexpected development leaves corrections officials in a quandary as they consider how to avoid a repeat of deadly outbreaks like those at San Quentin State Prison north of San Francisco, where 75% of inmates were sickened and 28 died this summer.

An initial 238 of 302 highly vulnerable inmates systemwide refused to move to solid-door cells where they would be less at risk for airborne transmission of the virus, said the federal court-appointed official who controls health care in California state prisons.

“What are they frightened of? Why wouldn’t they go?” asked Michael Bien, one of the lead attorneys who has been pushing for such transfers and broader inmate releases for months. “We don't have an easy answer for it.”

Usually, inmates are given little choice in where or how they are housed. But in this case, corrections officials respected inmates' wishes to stay put.

“There are times when the demands of public health can overcome patient preferences,” federal receiver J. Clark Kelso said in a statement to The Associated Press, but in this case he said the transfers would mainly benefit individual inmates. “What we can and must do is fully educate our patients about the comparative COVID-19 risks of dorm housing versus celled housing.”

For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some — especially older adults and people with existing health problems — it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia, and death.

Attorneys...