Parts of Greater Brisbane will remain in lockdown into the weekend, as authorities scramble to establish the source of two new Covid cases who moved extensively around the city and suburbs.
The snap three-day lockdown had been scheduled to end at 6pm on Friday. It will be extended until 6pm Saturday in only the Brisbane and Moreton Bay local government areas after the state recorded three new community coronavirus cases.
Lockdowns will be lifted in the rest of the state – including the Noosa, Sunshine Coast, Ipswich, Logan, Redlands, Gold Coast, Scenic Rim, Lockyer Valley, Somerset and Townsville city local government areas, as well as Magnetic Island and Palm Island – but some restrictions, including a mask mandate, will remain in place.
Of the three new cases, the two causing most concern are a mother and daughter from Carindale, in Brisbane’s south.
The Queensland chief health officer, Jeanette Young, said positive tests had only emerged at 1.35am on Friday morning, and that more details about the cases would be forthcoming as contract tracers better established their movements.
There are two main concerns that prompted Queensland to extend the lockdown in parts of greater Brisbane. The first is that there is not yet an obvious source of the mother and daughter’s infections.
The second is that they had moved extensively across Brisbane, including visiting a market at West End, a Greek Orthodox community centre and several retailers in the CBD.
The premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, said the extension was needed to allow contact tracers to identify and contact anyone at risk from the new cases.
“I want to thank everyone for doing the right thing but, as you can see, we’ve just got a situation at the moment that has just come in and we really need to give the people, our contact tracers, the time to do that,” Palaszczuk said.
“It is early days. We will get more information during the day but it is absolutely vital that we get on top of this today everyone. I am just asking for that extra 24 hours.”
The third case announced on Friday was the husband of an international airport worker, whose case was announced yesterday.
Young said those cases were the Delta variant but did not appear to meet the genomic sequencing of any other Australian cases. It had previously been theorised those cases were contracted from member of a flight crew.
Palaszczuk’s press briefing came ahead of a national cabinet meeting, at which she said Queensland would push to halve international arrival numbers.
The deputy premier, Steven Miles, said that overnight Queensland’s hotel quarantine system “hit capacity” .
“Today we are expecting 259 arrivals, including 58 air crew,” Miles said. “Unfortunately we can’t predict how many domestic arrivals will come from hotspots or how many contacts will need that hotel quarantine accommodation.
“We know we have 285 rooms becoming available but it will take seven days for our police and hotel quarantine coordinators to get a new hotel up and running and so it’s absolutely critical that we see that cut in the number of international visitors and we would hope that the prime minister agrees to that at national cabinet today.”
