R: What is the working directory when executing covr?

I'm working on a project, where I load a json file. By default, I start the project at the root of the project, however when testing, the path changes. Therefore I included the following statement:

if (grepl("testthat", getwd())) {
    template <- jsonlite::read_json("../../templates/initial_status.json")
  }else{
    template <- jsonlite::read_json("./templates/initial_status.json")
  }

This works, however, when using covr::gitlab() the file cannot be opened. I guess the working directory changed and therefore the file is not found:

Error in `open.connection(con, "rb")`: kann Verbindung nicht öffnen
Backtrace:
    x
 1. \-MyPackage::api_create(...) at test-API.R:40:2
 2.   \-MyPackage:::get_initial_status(initial_status)
 3.     \-jsonlite::read_json("../../templates/initial_status.json")

Of course a working around is to use setwd(...) however I don't like this, because I want to publish the package and therefore user may place the package in different locations.

What's the best solution here?