A federal court has extended the preliminary injunction against the Weld County Sheriff until early February, requiring continued adherence to certain COVID-19 protocols in the jail while the litigation is ongoing.

A group of inmates filed a federal lawsuit in April against Sheriff Steve Reams, which resulted in a judge’s order the following month outlining the pandemic protocols that the jail was to follow.

Those conditions included compiling a list of medically vulnerable inmates with underlying health conditions, ensuring those individuals could have sufficient distance from other detainees, institute increased monitoring of medically-vulnerable persons and obtaining sufficient masks for inmates.

“The jail isn’t removing sick inmates out of the pods unless they have at least four symptoms of COVID-19. Jail staff wrote on a poster that you must have at least four symptoms to be pulled out of the pod and quarantined,” wrote one inmate on April 7.

The preliminary injunction received several extensions. On Dec. 4, Chief Judge Philip A. Brimmer issued a 58-day extension, as the injunction was set to expire on Dec. 9.

The Greeley Tribune reported that the ACLU of Colorado proposed a consent agreement with Reams, although the sheriff contended he had already made many of the proposed changes before the lawsuit began.

Among the additional provisions in the proposed agreement are a stipulation to keep the jail’s inmate population as low as possible, reminding chiefs of police in Weld County to “be judicious” about minimizing arrests, and provide weekly data to the ACLU about the inmate count and COVID-19 testing.