Positive case at Elections Office
A Kootenai County Elections Office employee has tested positive for COVID-19, and the state is advising the county how to proceed.
Wednesday morning during the county commissioners' business meeting, deputy Secretary of State Chad Houck informed the board of the current situation and plans to move forward. The employee, who worked with voters at the county’s Third Street elections office, is currently stable and self-isolating at home, Houck said.
One or two elections office employees are planning to test today, Houck said, but healthcare providers have advised them that false-negative tests are possible because of the short time frame.
“We could expect to continue testing individuals more than one day and are waiting to hear other advice from other experts,” Houck said.
Some of the employees who had worked at the same time as the infected individual are still working at the office today, Houck said. Given the use of facial masks and only intermittent contact, he said they were permitted to return to work.
“Everyone that was on shift was made aware of it [the positive case] and are asymptomatic,” Houck said.
After receiving guidance from the SOS Office and Health and Welfare Director Dave Jeppesen, who sits on the Governor’s COVID Task Force, Houck flew to Coeur d’Alene Tuesday night to assist ongoing early voting processes. As of midnight Tuesday, the elections office building had undergone deep cleaning and sterilization by Servpro, Houck said, and it will continue to be cleaned on a nightly basis.
In the meeting, Houck informed commissioners that a handful of eligible employees who had previously tested positive and recovered handled opening the office Wednesday morning.
“We did open at 8 o’clock as is advertised, so there was no down time or failure of service there,” Houck said. “The biggest impact with any work was there was about a five minute longer wait this morning than there might have been otherwise, and that was because we took time to stage the temporary staff elections is utilizing.”
As of 9 a.m., the Secretary of State Office had not received Panhandle Health feedback. The elections office must hold early voting for two weeks by Idaho law, but Houck said they will continue to address the situation daily to determine the best course of action.
“It is really hard to plan for a dynamic situation,” Houck said. “We have contingency plans that play out all types of different directions, so we plan to move fluidly, and our primary goals are to keep early voting open while doing so safely.”
Kootenai County currently makes up 102,894 of Idaho’s 1,005,300 registered voters according to Secretary of State data. Almost 20,000 of Kootenai County’s 45,645 absentee ballots have been returned, and 1,775 citizens have participated in the early voting process as of Wednesday at noon.
Houck also mentioned that the elections office is not as available to answer phone calls because of their smaller staff size. For more information on Kootenai County Elections, they are recommending citizens look online at https://www.kcgov.us/31/Elections.