Owen County Courthouse. Hoosier Times file photo
SPENCER — The Owen County Health Department’s drive-through COVID-19 clinic tested 153 people on Monday.
“We’re not even open on Mondays, but people kept calling,” health department administrator Sheila Reeves said. “They had been exposed and needed to be tested. We couldn’t just turn them away.”
So she and two staff members put their workloads aside and started administering nasal-swab tests from their office on Spencer’s courthouse square. It was a busy day. On Tuesday, the clinic was seeing twice as many people as they doubled up on the number of tests per hour.
Owen County is in the midst of a coronavirus surge that caused the commissioners to call an emergency meeting Tuesday morning to move the county into the local yellow zone from now through Dec. 7, which means the county courthouse will be closed to the public except for special circumstances. Anyone with business to conduct at the courthouse will need to contact the office they want to visit and make an appointment.
Courthouse workers will report to work daily, and they will be required to wear face masks or shields and maintain social distancing while there. The restrictions mirror those put in place early in the pandemic.
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