TOLEDO, Iowa (AP) — An east-central Iowa county sheriff is refusing to allow jail inmates access to COVID-19 vaccines, citing the jail’s lack of medical staff, among other things.

Television station KCRG reports that Tama County Sheriff Dennis Kucera confirmed that inmates are not being given access to the vaccines, saying in an email that “we do not have medical staff on-site that could give the vaccine even if we did offer it.”

Kucera said for that reason, jail staff would have to take inmates out of the jail to get a vaccine, “which is not in the best interest of the inmate’s health and security.”

Kucera says inmates have little risk of exposure, because each prisoner is quarantined for a time before being placed into the general population.