Kerianne Ehrlich, supervisor of the Ellsworth County Health Department, voiced concerns about a possible spike in COVID-19 cases during Monday’s meeting of the Ellsworth County commissioners.

“The Ellsworth Correctional Facility is seeing an increase in inmate cases,” Ehrlich told commissioners. “The issue is those cases get reported to the state as Ellsworth County cases.”

Ehrlich said there will be a “pretty good” increase in COVID-19 cases from Friday because of the mass testing the prison did at the end of the past week.

Commissioner Dennis Rolfs asked Ehrlich how the ECF inmates could be getting the virus. Ehrlich replied that she thought ECF was still getting inmates from other prisons.

Ehrlich said once ECF records a positive case of COVID-19, both the infected inmate and his cellmate are transferred to another prison with a COVID unit.

“My concern is we have all those inmates testing positive, when is it going to trickle down into staff,” she asked. “Those people are out in our community, so I’m just kind of sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for that to happen.”

Ehrlich said Ellsworth County has five active cases in the community as of Monday, but no hospitalizations. She originally reported four cases at the commission meeting but reported five cases later that day. In other business:

• A $2,000 bid from Crystal Clear Windows to clean the outside of the windows at the county courthouse was approved.

The next meeting of the Ellsworth County commissioners will be at 9 a.m. Monday, Oct. 5, at the county courthouse.