A US federal prison inmate who gave birth while she was on a ventilator has died of Covid-19. Andrea Circle Bear, 30, died on 28 April while serving a 26-month sentence for a drug charge in South Dakota.

There have now been 30 coronavirus-related deaths of federal inmates, and more than 1,300 confirmed cases according to the Bureau of Prisons. She appears to be the first federal female inmate to have died with coronavirus.

There are around 150,000 federal inmates in the US. A federal inmate is someone inside a prison or jail operated by the federal government as opposed to a particular state. It is not clear how many inmates have died in state-run prisons. The Marshall Project, a non-profit news organisation which reports on the US criminal justice system, gathered data from state and federal prison agencies across the US and estimated there have been more than 9,400 cases and 131 coronavirus-related deaths.(BBC)…[+]