Minimum-security inmate Wyoming’s 1st to die of COVID-19

CASPER, Wyo. (AP) - A man who died in December was Wyoming's first inmate killed by COVID-19.

The inmate at the minimum-security Wyoming Honor Farm in Riverton died Dec. 22. The cause took time to confirm by autopsy, the Wyoming Department of Corrections announced Friday.

Wyoming for months was among just a handful of states with no inmate deaths from the coronavirus, the Casper Star-Tribune reported.

Vermont is now the only state with no such deaths, according to the nonprofit prison news organization The Marshall Project.

Recent surveillance testing found 14 new positive cases in Wyoming prisons: 13 at the Wyoming Medium Correctional Institution in Torrington and one at the Wyoming State Penitentiary in Rawlins.

As of Friday, 550 people in Wyoming had died of COVID-19.