GREENFIELD — The Hancock County Courthouse Annex will be closed to the public next week after two Hancock County employees tested positive for COVID-19, County Commissioner John Jessup said late Thursday afternoon.
The offices will operate by appointment only, as they did for a period after a state of emergency was initially declared in March.
The annex will be open Friday to give employees a chance to prepare for a week of working from home.
Jessup said a few other employees will be tested for the coronavirus as a precaution. The Hancock County Health Department, whose offices are in the annex, will conduct contact tracing, as it does with all confirmed cases, by tracking people who may have had contact with the infected individuals and advising them to self-isolate during the period when they may develop symptoms.
The two employees who tested positive likely did not come into contact with many others at the annex, Jessup said.
For medical privacy reasons, Jessup said, he could not disclose what office or offices the employees work in, or what floor they were located on. He said he did not know whether the two developed symptoms of the virus or were tested for other reasons.
Jessup said the county found out about one of the cases on Wednesday and had known about the other for several days.
“I didn’t want to wait for tests to come in on three or four other people; we wanted to be proactive before the holiday weekend,” Jessup said.
All employees at the county annex are required to wear masks while interacting with the public and have been practicing social distancing, Jessup said. The building is deep-cleaned regularly. He said the county has no reason to believe the employees contracted COVID-19 at work, rather than somewhere else.
The commissioners plan to reassess the situation mid-week with the intention of the offices fully reopening on July 6, after the holiday weekend.
Hancock County has recorded a total of 397 positive cases of COVID-19 and 35 total deaths, according to the Indiana State Department of Health’s latest data report. The county has averaged fewer than three new infections per day in June. The vast majority of deaths have occurred in long-term care facilities.