An AACC employee has tested positive for the novel coronavirus COVID-19, college President Dawn Lindsay announced on Saturday. 

In a second email on Sunday, Lindsay said the employee “did not have direct contact with students and had limited contact with some staff” and was not at the college. She said the Maryland Department of Health is informing those who had contact with the employee. 

Eighteen people in Anne Arundel County had tested positive for the coronavirus as of Sunday, according to the county Department of Health. 

“It was … reasonable to assume that, at some point, one or more of us [from the campus community] would exhibit symptoms of COVID-19,” Lindsay said in the Saturday announcement. “That has now happened.” 

Lindsay advised employees and students who test positive for the disease not to rely on the college to notify those they have come into contact to. Instead, she said they should follow guidelines from the county Department of Health. 

The guidelines call for anyone with symptoms to monitor themselves for fever and coughing and isolate themselves for 14 days. She also asked students and employees to notify AACC Human Resources Director Suzanne Boyer at slboyer@aacc.edu if they are tested or receive treatment for the virus. 

AACC students said the first case of coronavirus among the campus community makes them anxious. 

“[It makes me] slightly nervous,” Johannes Haasbroek, a second-year communications student, said. “Now it’s in our backyard.”  

Bridget Voss, a second-year transfer studies student, called it “kind of crazy. … It’s kind of scary. I mean, we were all still at school.” 

Maryland had 244 cases of the coronavirus and three confirmed deaths as of Sunday, according to coronavirus.maryland.gov.