San Francisco, July 31 (RHC)-- A federal prison complex in the U.S. state of California struggled to contain the spread of the coronavirus because of staff shortages, limited use of home confinement and ineffective screening, according to a watchdog group.

In a new report, the Office of the Inspector General at the Department of Justice said that two staff members at the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) facility in Lompoc, California, came to work in late March despite experiencing coronavirus symptoms, though those symptoms were not detected during screening.

Officials in March also failed to test or isolate an inmate who reported that he had begun having symptoms two days earlier.  The inmate later tested positive at a hospital.

As of mid-July, four inmates had died and more than 1,000 had tested positive, according to the inspector general's office, which is conducting 16 reviews of prisons, halfway houses and other institutions under the control of the BOP. Lompoc, which has four facilities, houses about 2,700 low-, minimum- and medium-security inmates.