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Public defenders have filed a lawsuit to demand the immediate release of nearly 540 “medically vulnerable” prisoners from Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center to prevent them from falling victim to the coronavirus pandemic.

Lawyers for MDC inmates allege that the facility’s warden has identified 537 prisoners out of the roughly 1,700 housed there as having an elevated risk of catching the bug.

The attorneys are “deeply concerned that our clients will be exposed, sickened, or potentially face serious illness or death because of MDC’s inadequate and slow response to this public health crisis, and its lack of medical facilities,” Deidre von Dornum of the Federal Defenders of New York wrote in court papers.

According to the lawsuit, which was filed on behalf of four MDC inmates, the prisoners are not being given hand sanitizer, must use toilet paper to blow their noses and are given only one small bar of soap each week.

MDC staff has left the task of sanitizing common areas but are not being provided with cleaning supplies, the suit charges.

Meanwhile, new prisoners are still being brought to the MDC in Sunset Park and are screened by taking their temperatures and asked if they have recently traveled abroad.

The Federal Defenders claim in the lawsuit that MDC have struggled with past crises — they cite the extended lockdown at the facility in winter 2019 following a blackout that left inmates without heat.

There have been eight confirmed coronavirus cases among federal inmates in New York, the US Bureau of Prisons reported on Monday on its website.

One of those cases turned up in MDC and three inmates at Manhattan’s Metropolitan Correctional Center tested positive.

The inmates’ attorneys allege in the lawsuit that four MDC staff members have also come down with coronavirus.

The bureau did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.