73% of the inmates at an Ohio prison have tested positive for the coronavirus

• The Ohio State Health Department announced Tuesday that 1,828 inmates at Marion Correctional Institution have tested positive for the coronavirus. That's 73% of the total inmate population.
• There have been no deaths reported yet and the remaining 667 prisoners are in quarantine.
• Ohio state's entire prison system has reported 2,426 confirmed COVID-19 cases. Ohio inmates make up 21% of the infections in the state.
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At one prison in Ohio, 73% of its inmate population has tested positive for the novel coronavirus.

State officials announced Sunday that 1,828 inmates at Marion Correctional Institution had become infected by the virus, in addition to 109 members of the corrections staff. The remaining 667 inmates have been quarantined to curb the spread of infection inside the prison walls, the Columbus Dispatch reported.

According to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (ODRC), mass testing was implemented at Marion Correctional, Pickaway Correctional, and the Franklin Medical Center.

"Because we are testing everyone — including those who are not showing symptoms — we are getting positive test results on individuals who otherwise would have never been tested because they were asymptomatic," the ODRC said in its daily release of information.

The ODRC has reported 2,426 confirmed cases of COVID-19 across the entire state prison system as of Sunday, according to the Columbus Dispatch. With 11,602 total confirmed cases across Ohio, inmates make up nearly 21% of the infections in the state.

The extraordinary number of infections within prison walls comes as no surprise to medical experts and prison advocates.

As the coronavirus swept the country, US jails and prisons have been devastated by the virus. Prison advocates have begun to demand the temporary mass releases of inmates after widespread coronavirus outbreaks in state prison systems, including California, New York, and Texas.

Coronavirus prevention is dependent on frequent handwashing, social distancing, and isolation from people who are sick.

Locked up in close quarters, many inmates are powerless to protect themselves from the highly contagious virus. The inability to take coronavirus precautionary measures compounded by the lack of access to quality healthcare has made American correctional facilities "fertile grounds for infectious disease," experts told Insider.

"They're unique because these people are in tight confines, often tightly packed, and that's a fertile ground for infectious disease," said Dr. Burton Bentley II, an emergency medicine physician and founder of the consulting firm Elite Medical Experts, told Insider. "Anytime you have populations that are tightly condensed, the spread of communicable diseases … is obviously elevated and accelerated."

Although the virus has swept the Marion Correctional Institution, there have been no inmate deaths reported yet, though one Marion Correctional staff member has died of COVID-19.

According to JoEllen Smith, a correction department spokeswoman, the ODRC is sending inmates who require additional care to hospitals near the prisons or at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. The Ohio National Guard is also providing medical support across the Ohio prison system to help treat the overwhelming surge in cases, according to the Columbus Dispatch.

"We are also working with local hospitals to onboard individuals who are interested in providing medical support to our facilities and who are available and qualified to do so," Smith said.

To prevent the virus from spreading even more within Ohio correctional facilities, more than 29,000 inmates have been placed in quarantine, according to the ODRC.

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