Brookville, IN—The Franklin County Health Department announced Friday that fifteen more patients have recovered and have been released from quarantine, bringing Franklin County’s total of recovered patients to 51. Another patient, a person in their 80s, has been taken off a ventilator and is breathing on their own, but still in the hospital.
Health officials say they also received thirteen new positive cases for COVID-19, bringing the total number of cases in Franklin County to 88. All new cases are adults. “Some of these cases would have been reported this week,” said Franklin County Health Department Supervisor Angie Ruther, RN. “Yet, some of these are older cases that have just now been reported to us,” Ruther continued.
“People may not realize that we have Connersville, Rushville, Greensburg and West Harrison mailing addresses in Franklin County, as well as parts of Dearborn County having Brookville mailing addresses. Plus, Batesville is in both Franklin and Ripley counties,” stated Franklin County Sheriff’s Deputy Jason Lovins. “It appears that this significant increase, or at least in part, can be attributed to the various labs and/or ISDH sending the results to the wrong county initially,” continued Deputy Lovins.
The Franklin County Commissioners are working closely with area officials on travel advisories and opening back businesses slowly. “We are looking to the future and developing plans to, at some point when it is safe to do so, begin getting our businesses back open and our citizens back to work,” stated Commissioner Tom Linkel. “We understand the need to return to some type of normalcy. We are just as eager to get our county up and running again while still abiding by the governor’s order,” continued Commissioner Linkel.
