report relate to the situation in the establishments until the date on which the visits ended, i.e. 17 August 2020, and are based on the conducted interviews and documents sent by penitentiary units. Guidelines of the Prison Service Headquarters on procedures to be followed in cases of suspected coronavirus infection. On 4 March 2020, the Director General of the Prison Service sent a letter with algorithms drawn up in cooperation with the Chief Sanitary Inspectorate, indicating the detailed procedures to be followed with regard to people suspected of coronavirus infection, to the Regional Directors of the Prison Service. The letter emphasizes that the guidelines are a basis for developing internal procedures by the individual establishments, taking into account their specificity. The Guidelines of the Prison Service Headquarters set out the methodology to be followed with regard to newly arrived prisoners with COVID-19, and other prisoners with symptoms of COVID-19. The Prison Service Headquarters sent a subsequent document with the guidelines on 25 March 2020. The algorithms applied to persons who had tested positive for the presence of the coronavirus but had no indications for hospitalization. Such persons should be placed in either of the two isolation facilities established within the premises of the prison in Potulice and the remand prison in Bytom (if there are no free places, they should be placed in the prison in Potulice). All algorithms developed by the Prison Service Headquarters in consultation with the Chief Sanitary Inspectorate contain clear guidelines to be followed in the event of coronavirus infection. The directors of the visited establishments did not raise any objections as to the interpretation of the received guidelines. On their basis, in accordance with the order of the Headquarters, directors of prisons and remand prisons issued internal instructions regulating the methods of protection against the spread of the virus in their establishments200. Therefore, detailed instruction have been issued on dealing with newly arriving prisoners during the pandemic, in particular with regard to the methods of using personal protection equipment in contact with an infected or potentially infected person. Such instructions contain not only the description and characteristics of individual types of personal protection equipment, such as masks, aprons, gloves, protective eyewear, but also summarize the knowledge on the safe use of the available personal protection equipment. The prison in Międzyrzecz was an exception. It adopted a system in which the guidelines developed during weekly videoconferences with directors of other establishments were adopted for immediate implementation. Therefore, most of the measures were undertaken based on the guidelines of the Prison Service regional director or national headquarters director, without developing additional internal procedures (see: the NMPT Report on the visit to the prison in Międzyrzecz, KMP.571.16.2020). 200 80