How Brasília “celebrity prison” became a coronavirus hotbed

Famous in Brazil for housing inmates convicted of million-dollar fraud as part of grand corruption investigations such as Operation Car Wash, the Papuda prison complex in the capital Brasilia is now the penitentiary with the most confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the country. Alone, it has almost the same number of infected inmates and employees as all the other jails in the country put together.

Last Thursday, the number of those infected by the new coronavirus among Papuda’s prisoners and police officers reached 1,231 — of which 980 were inmates and 251 were employees. So far, two convicts and one prison guard have died as a result of Covid-19.

Throughout the country, 1,383 coronavirus infections have been recorded among Brazil’s prison population, according to the National Penitentiary Department. Of these, 741 inmates have already recovered, while...