(Westville, IN) - More prison inmates at Westville should be tested for COVID-19.

 That’s what a local official said during yesterday’s county commissioners meeting. Right now, only inmates showing symptoms are tested.

County council President Randy Novak says the need is there because a high percentage of inmates who have been tested are coming back positive. He doesn’t see how prisons are any different than meatpacking plants, where all workers are being tested.

Prison officials said nearly 200 inmates at Westville have been tested, and166 came back positive.

142 of those offenders have now recovered.

Kristin Doss, chief medical officer for the Indiana Department of Correction, said there aren’t enough resources to test and possibly keep testing all 31 hundred inmates at Westville. Doss also said the prison is following all federal state and local guidelines in addressing the virus at the prison.