After six weeks, in-person inmate visitation will restart Feb. 14, the Delaware Department of Correction announced Monday.

“Thanks to the success of our comprehensive COVID-19 screening, testing and mitigation measures, along with the significant reduction in community spread of the virus, we are able to restart in-person inmate visitation on Monday, Feb. 14,” said DOC Commissioner Monroe B. Hudson Jr.

“We greatly appreciate the ongoing efforts of our DOC staff, health care and program providers, the cooperation of inmates and the understanding of inmate families, as we continue to navigate the risks of this highly infectious global pandemic to Delaware’s correctional system.”

In-person visitation had been suspended Jan. 1 amid the record rate of transmission of the illness in the community and as part of ongoing efforts to minimize the risk of spread to DOC facilities. Prison locations will begin taking registrations for visits this week.

Updated visitation procedures will be posted here and on DOC social media channels.

Weekend furloughs from Level IV Community Corrections Centers will also be restarted next week.

In addition, prison programming in Level V establishments — which has been held mostly virtually since late December — will begin the transition back to in-person functions next week.

According to DOC, testing and vaccination statistics include:

• 19 inmates across Delaware’s correctional system had active COVID-19 infection as of Monday, including 13 who were asymptomatic, six who were displaying only minor symptoms and zero hospitalizations.
• To date, DOC has administered 31,604 inmate COVID-19 tests and has continued to aggressively employ testing among its populations.
• DOC continues to provide inmates with access to vaccination and booster shots, and inmates receive regular vaccine information. Sixty-one percent of inmates have received at least one vaccine dose, and 57% of vaccinated inmates eligible for booster shots have been administered them. Additionally, more than 1,650 inmates have been released to the community after receiving COVID-19 vaccination while in DOC custody.

DOC offers a variety of phone and video visitation to inmates to facilitate family and community support important to their well-being. During the pandemic, DOC sped up and completed a multiyear technology project to expand video visitation to all Level V facilities.

Additionally, work is underway to further expand video visitation to Level IV work-release and violation-of-probation sites.

The Jan. 1 suspension of in-person visitation was the third time during the pandemic that visits were temporarily stopped.