MANATEE COUNTY, Fla. — The Manatee County Administration Building reopened Monday after five people contracted COVID-19 – and two died – in the county's IT department.
County Administrator Dr. Scott Hopes says the weekend was spent vacating the building to sanitize and disinfect the entire space. Hopes says the Department of Health conducted a preliminary epidemiological investigation of the situation.
Since reopening this morning, Hopes says no additional cases in the IT department have been reported.
Now, officials will work to determine the timeline of the virus' spread while also streamlining reporting processes and encouraging staff to get vaccinated.
“This particular outbreak demonstrates the effectiveness, I believe, with the vaccine. All of the cases were non-vaccinated, they were unvaccinated," Hopes said. "We know of individuals in these departments that were vaccinated – fully vaccinated – and they did not contract the infection from their coworkers.”
According to Hopes, "case 0," or the employee with the first known case in the department, first started showing symptoms the week of May 21. The county administrator adds he believes the individual stayed home for two days prior to testing positive for the virus on May 29.
At this time the county does not know if cases and deaths were a result of a variant of the coronavirus but Hopes says it "appeared to behave like the Delta variant." Official confirmation from the Department of Health is still pending.
“I believe that we probably have a variant that is unlike the variants we were experiencing a year ago. This seems to be a very contagious variant and based on these five cases in this situation it was a 40 percent case fatality rate. That’s very high," Hopes added.
Moving forward, directors who become aware of employees that are out of work for testing positive for COVID-19 will have a central reporting location in Human Resource to "ensure people are adequately notified."
With the county being unable to enforce vaccination, Hopes says situations like these come back to personal responsibility and personal choice. He encourages those who choose not to be vaccinated to wear an N95 or KN95 mask to protect themselves, their families and their coworkers.
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