Welcome to Public Health On Call, a new podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Our focus is the novel coronavirus.

I'm Josh Sharfstein, a faculty member at Johns Hopkins, and also a former secretary of Maryland's health department.

Our goal with this podcast is to bring evidence and experts to help you understand today's

news about the novel coronavirus and what it means for tomorrow.

If you have questions, you can email them to public health question at jhhhue.edu.

That's public health question at jh.u.edu for future podcast episodes.

Today, Stephanie Desmond interviews Chris Byer, the Desmond M. Tutu professor of public health

and human rights at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

They explore how dangerous coronavirus infection is in our

overcrowded jails, prisons, and immigration detention centers, and they look at what solutions

may be available. Let's listen. I'm here today with Chris Beir, an infectious disease as epidemiologist

at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Today we're going to talk about coronavirus is impacting prisons, jails, and other places

where lots of people are detained together. Chris, thanks for joining us.

Thank you for having me. It's great to be here.

I'm wondering if you could talk about how this pandemic is impacting

folks in those facilities. Well, absolutely. And the first thing I should say, Stephanie,

is that we know that this is a problem internationally. There were early on outbreaks of COVID-19

disease in Chinese prisons and detention facilities.

There's one underway right now in Rikers Island, major detention facility in New York.

But there's some important information about the United States and prisons, jails, and detention centers in the U.S. that makes these populations particularly vulnerable

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