LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – Indiana won’t let landlords evict renters or lenders foreclose on homeowners until August 14, Gov. Eric Holcomb said Wednesday as he extended both COVID-19 prohibitions for two weeks.
Moratoriums on those actions had been set to expire Friday.
Holcomb also said Indiana will remain in its current phase of a five-step reopening until August 27, in part because of high rates of positive coronavirus cases in some counties. That means bars, restaurant dining rooms and entertainment venues can’t return to full capacity.
“I want to be safe, not sorry,” he said. “So this gives us kind of that runway that we’re seeing throughout the country and other states that have introduced similar requirements to bend those positivity rates down.”
Asked during a virtual news briefing if he would consider closing bars, Holcomb said he prefers for now a county-by-county approach rather than a state mandate.
“We think we can get there with good enforcement on the ground with the guidelines that are there right now,” he said. “We’ll see where we are tomorrow, next week and next month.”
Indiana reported 630 new cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday, taking the state’s total to 64,299. There have been more than 6,400 new positive infections in the past week, or about 10 percent of all cases since the pandemic began in March, said Dr. Kris Box, the state’s health commissioner.
Box said Indiana’s ICU and ventilator capacities are “holding steady,” with most of those patients not dealing with the virus. More than 900 people are hospitalized with COVID-19 or its symptoms, she said, a number that “continues to tick up,” although daily hospital admissions have declined.
Indiana’s average seven-day positivity rate, 6.8%, is up from a low of 4.5% from mid-June, Box said.
Meanwhile, she said the state’s contact tracing program has helped keep the virus from spreading in some areas.
In one case, she said tracers were able to quickly determine people who had come into close contact with a church camp staff member in southern Indiana who tested positive. Those people then quarantined.
In all, she said, 40 of the 50 camp staff from at least eight states tested positive “but they were able to quarantine or isolate on site and we were able to keep the campers from joining the staffers and then increasing the number of infections.”
She said 75 other cases were traced to camps, family reunions, church events, graduation parties, weddings and bachelor parties.
Two bachelor parties in southwestern Indiana generated 11 cases, Box said, although she suspects there may have been more because “people refused to name close contacts from any of those parties.”
She also said up to 60 people were exposed to a case at a prom. She did not identify where it occurred.
The state’s contact tracing program also has fared better than in some other states, she said, with more than 77% of people who tested positive in June “successfully contacted.” That rate climbed to 80% from July 1-20.
That means those people either completed an initial interview or refused to do so, Box said.
“These are good percentages compared to what I’m hearing from other states, but they also mean that about 20% percent of people who are positive are not responding to contact tracers,” she said.
“Those are the people we really worry about, because it means they likely aren’t taking steps they need to to protect themselves, their friends and their family members who might also have been exposed.”
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