Montville ― About 20 inmates in a 60-person drug rehabilitation unit at Corrigan Correctional Center tested positive for COVID-19 earlier this week, according to Ken Wright, the chief union steward for Corrigan.

Correction staff at the maximum-security correctional center, which houses around 700 male prisoners, are taking a proactive approach to the outbreak, he added.

Wright said the outbreak was isolated almost entirely to one particular unit, which mostly houses inmates who are on the center’s methadone program. That program is designed to help inmates who are coming off heroin addictions by treating them with methadone, he added.

The unit’s inmates have typically just entered the prison, Wright said, which may have led to the outbreak. The prisoners in the unit have a cellmate, he said, unless they are on a restricted status.

The staff has tested the center’s entire population over the last two days, and transferred all COVID-positive inmates to a special COVID-19 care unit at the MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution in Suffield, Wright said.

Additionally, all inmates were provided with masks, he said, and there have been no new cases since the positive test results.

The inmates in the affected unit are being quarantined, but are still being let out of their cells for recreation time, Wright said.

“It wasn’t anything completely alarming and the state still does have an isolated COVID unit, so they’re definitely ahead of it right now,” he added.

The state Department of Correction could not be reached for comment.

d.drainville@theday.com