NSW residents have been told to avoid travel to Queensland if possible, with Premier Gladys Berejiklian warning further lockdowns may affect the Sunshine State as it recorded eight new local cases on Tuesday.
Greater Brisbane went into a three-day lockdown on Monday after its recent spate of local coronavirus cases, linked to a hospital, grew to seven.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard.Credit:James Brickwood
On Tuesday, Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced an additional eight local cases had been detected.
Five of the cases are linked to the cases detected in the past week, which included a nurse in the COVID-19 ward at Brisbane’s Princess Alexandra Hospital who was recorded in Monday’s numbers, Queensland Chief Health Officer Dr Jeannette Young said. A sixth case is a close contact of a case and is believed to also be linked to this cluster.
The two remaining cases are under investigation but are believed to be older cases linked to the doctor at Princess Alexandra Hospital who tested positive on March 11.
The infections of the two hospital staff are being treated as separate clusters started by separate returned travellers, Dr Young said.
There were no new local coronavirus cases reported in NSW on Tuesday, after two positive cases travelled from Queensland to Byron Bay on the weekend.
“I hope that we won’t have any new cases emerge in NSW but I wouldn’t be surprised if we did,” Ms Berejiklian said on Tuesday morning, adding she was expecting more cases to be recorded in Queensland.
Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant said while there were no new cases in NSW, a person who attended the bachelorette party at Byron Bay at which it is believed coronavirus was transmitted was a usual resident of NSW. She is currently in Queensland and is being counted as a Queensland case.
The virus variant associated with the outbreak is the B1.1.7 variant, sometimes known as the UK strain. This is the most widely a variant of concern has spread within the community in Australia.
Dr Chant said there “may be additional venues” of concern in the Byron area as contact tracing interviews of people at the party are finalised by Queensland health authorities.
She urged people who had been in the Byron area on the weekend or returned from Queensland from March 11 to continue to check the NSW Health website for possible exposure sites.
In a radio appearance earlier on Tuesday morning, the Premier warned against travel to Queensland.
“Definitely don’t go to Greater Brisbane, but if I had plans [to go anywhere in Queensland], if it were me, I would postpone them,” Ms Berejiklian told 2GB.
“People shouldn’t be disappointed if they go to Queensland and then there are further lockdowns, we can’t predict that.”
After all other states initiated travel bans on people from Brisbane or Queensland on Monday, NSW does not have border restrictions with Queensland in place.
However, people who have returned from the Greater Brisbane area since March 20 are required to comply with the region’s lockdown provisions while in NSW.
Ms Berejiklian said that anyone who had been to several venues in Byron Bay visited by two positive cases should get tested and isolate.
Anyone in NSW with even the mildest of symptoms was also urged to get tested and Ms Berejiklian said police and regulators would be cracking down on the use of check-in codes at venues.
“We can’t be complacent, that’s what’s keeping us safe,” she said.
There were five new cases recorded in returned overseas travellers in NSW on Tuesday.
Mary Ward is a health reporter at The Sydney Morning Herald.
Pallavi Singhal is a data journalist at The Sydney Morning Herald
Kate Aubusson is Health Editor of The Sydney Morning Herald.
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