It's been two weeks since the COVID-19 lockdown was lifted in Cairns and Yarrabah after two cases of the Delta variant were detected, one in a reef pilot who then passed it on to a taxi driver.
The snap, three-day lockdown was the region's second since the start of the pandemic in 2020.
Many locals and health authorities were worried the cluster would grow, but the community escaped seemingly unscathed.
So far, so good. However, in a pandemic, nothing is certain.
But why has it not escalated, when outbreaks further south and interstate took off like wildfire?
The ABC spoke to the Townsville's director of public health, Dr Steven Donohue, who has also been working with the Cairns and Hinterland Hospital and Health Service, to find the answer.
Is Far North safe yet?
"At the moment, we don't have any wastewater detections in the sewage system," Dr Donohue said.
To keep confidence up, however, he said testing rates need to remain high.
"It's really about the next time and picking that up really quickly."
What about false positives?
While false positives do occur, they were ruled out in these two cases.
Dr Donohue said when the reef pilot first tested positive early this month, experts initially wondered if the infection was "remote".
Dr Donohue said the man was re-tested using different testing platforms which confirmed that he was positive.
Further testing also showed the variant of his Delta strain was different to outbreaks in Brisbane and in Sydney.
In the second surprise case, the taxi driver was also tested multiple times, each time coming back positive.
Why didn't the Cairns cluster spread?
It's a bit of a mystery, but Dr Donohue put it down to good luck and good management.
The reef pilot was fully vaccinated and had very few symptoms.
"Not even very close household type contacts or colleagues had become sick, even though they'd been in contact with him," Dr Donohue said.
He said the cab driver — despite being in the community for 10 days with the virus and not being vaccinated — had also not been very infectious.
"We know that people who are sensible, they wash their hands, they adhere to social distancing and wear masks are much less likely to transmit this to lots of other people.
"I think a lot of people are mystified about this because we say, on one hand, the Delta variant is virulent and highly infectious.
"I guess we dodged a bullet there, but we had to do a lot of work."
Where did it come from?
Tracing has led the strain back to the crew of a ship who the pilot had ferried off Cape York Peninsula in July.
The pilot later caught a ride in the taxi driver's cab.
Testing showed the Delta strain matched the ship's crew when they were tested on arrival in New Zealand.
What have we learned?
Dr Donohue said the work by healthcare staff was exemplary and the queues of locals getting tested was extremely encouraging.
But, he said, we can always do better.
In the future, Dr Donohue said staff would prioritise testing close and casual contacts, some of whom struggled to find bookings during the recent lockdown.
He also emphasised the importance of using QR code check-ins and increasing the vaccination rate.
However, Dr Donohue warned, further clusters were inevitable.
"We're going to be working as hard as possible until we get to really high vaccination levels," he said.
