Carter County employees leave self-quarantine

VAN BUREN — Carter County Clerk Leona Stephens hugged her young daughters for the first time in more than a week Friday after she and other county officials were able to leave self-quarantine.

“All elected officials housed in the courthouse, and the employees that were here” on April 1 had to self-quarantine until COVID-19 test results were returned for an employee, who had come to work sick that day, Stephens said.

County officials, Stephens said, had been hopeful the “results would come back quickly because they had been having a turn around of two or three days, but, unfortunately, everyone here was symptomatic, and they started testing a whole bunch of people.”

That created a bottleneck, Stephens said, so the results weren’t returned until about 8:30 a.m. Friday. The employee, she said, tested negative for COVID-19.

That employee is “fine,” Stephens said. “We’re all fine. We can get back to work.”

Carter County’s courthouse has been closed to the public for some time now due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We were doing really well on not letting people in, limiting access,” Stephens said. “Employees could come in to work, and we tried to do our business, as much as possible, outside the courthouse.

“Then, we had an employee come to work sick; it all went down hill. We had to all be quarantined until the tests came back because she was symptomatic.”

Stephens described the self-quarantine as hard.

“My kids, I could see them from a distance, but I couldn’t hug them or play with them or any of that,” Stephens said. “That’s been really hard.

“We’re through it now. … They got a big ole bear hug this morning.”

County officials, Stephens said, are taking extra precautions going forward.

“Now, each elected official is responsible for assuring that their employees are not sick, not running a temperature, that they’re not showing any symptoms, that they haven’t traveled outside the State of Missouri, those kinds of things before they can come in” to work, Stephens said.

Since the pandemic began, Stephens said, she has heard people say this is the new normal.

“I refuse to believe that; I believe we will get back to a normal normal” again, Stephens said.