FARIBAULT, Minn. — A Minnesota prisoner who tested positive for COVID-19 died at the hospital on Tuesday.
The Minnesota Department of Corrections (DOC) reported the death in a news release Thursday. If an autopsy confirms the cause of death as COVID-19, it will be the first such death in the DOC since the pandemic began.
The man, identified by the DOC as 43-year-old Adrian Raymaar Keys, was incarcerated at MCF-Faribault and tested positive for the coronavirus on June 4. According to the DOC, his condition deteriorated over the weekend of June 20, and he was hospitalized on June 22. He died at about 9:45 p.m. June 23.
Since June 3, when the first positive test was reported at Faribault, more than 200 cases have been identified at that facility. Keys and two other people from the prison were hospitalized, and one remains in critical condition.
The 200 positive cases are out of a population of 1,734 at MCF-Faribault.
The DOC says people have also tested positive for COVID-19 at prisons in Moose Lake, Willow River, St. Cloud and Lino Lakes.
Plans to prevent the spread of the virus at each prison in Minnesota can be found online here. The DOC has also been working to release people who were close to the end of their sentence, and they've gone from a total statewide population of about 8,900 on March 1 to 7,962 on June 25.
