The equation for COVID-19 hot spots has been clear since the earliest days of the pandemic: Take facilities where people live in close quarters, then add conditions that make it hard to take preventive measures such as wearing personal protective equipment or keeping socially distant.
Major outbreaks in nursing homes this spring shocked the nation. Now, residents of those facilities are among the first in line for the vaccine.
Similar conditions plague the nation’s jails, prisons and detention centers, where outbreaks continue. The 2.3 million people incarcerated in the U.S. are nearly five times as likely to test positive for the coronavirus as Americans generally and nearly three times as likely to die, after adjusting for age and sex.
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