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Owners of the Woodland Commons business complex in Cocoa are on guard after a state government employee reportedly tested positive for coronavirus this month.

"We've been notified that a state employee who went home on March 14 has since tested positive," said Thomas Yardley, a lawyer and property manager who is part-owner of the complex on Michigan Avenue.

The office complex is a mix of private businesses and public agencies, Yardley said. Those include a counseling and psychiatry office and a government agency that helps people with disabilities find work.

Yardley said nobody has been inside the affected office since the employee was reported sick. He was told by state agencies nobody would be returning to the office until at least March 30.

"Before this happened, I had already locked my lobby and I'm doing everything over the phone," Yardley said, adding that he has been ramping up sanitizing measures in the office.

It was not confirmed by the Florida Department of Health if this was a new case of coronavirus, which would make it the third confirmed case in Brevard County amid a global pandemic.

The two cases so far reported in Brevard have been a Northrup Grumman employee and a 76-year-old woman who had recently been in contact with a known COVID-19 patient while in New York.

Yardley said that, despite taking precautions, he knows the risk isn't entirely avoidable.

"We feel we were prepared before all this happened. It's just a matter of time before we're all exposed."

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Contact Vazquez at tvazquez@floridatoday.com, 321-917-7491 or on Twitter @tyler_vazquez. Support his work by subscribing to FloridaToday.com.