Qld Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has revealed there are three new COVID-19 cases on the first day after the three-day Greater Brisbane lockdown was lifted.
Health by Hayden Johnson, Janelle Miles 13th Jan 2021 5:10 AM
Premium Content Vulnerabilities in Queensland s hotel quarantine system have prompted the Opposition to demand an overhaul as police investigators prepare to sift through four days of CCTV to understand how a hotel cleaner was infected. A joint Queensland Health and police investigation has been launched into the incident, which resulted in 2.5 million Greater Brisbane residents being plunged into a three-day lockdown. The cleaner, in her 20s, is the first case of a hotel quarantine employee being infected at work in Queensland. Genomic sequencing has linked her case to a man, in his 30s, who returned to Queensland on December 30 after travelling from Ghana - the state s first known case of the UK variant. The man s partner has also tested positive to the variant, dubbed B117.
The new Berala cluster cases were a man and a woman in their 30s and a child.
They were close contacts of a man and woman in their 30s reported on Sunday as positive cases who were identified after an existing case remembered holding a small gathering at her home on December 27, which she had not previously listed in contact tracing interviews.
Today s three reported cases interacted with yesterday s cases at another household gathering on December 29.
Dr Chant said NSW Health was investigating the series of events for possible subsequent infection events but was confident they had worked through the chain of transmission.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk yesterday announced Greater Brisbane s surprise three-day lockdown was over after no new COVID-19 cases were detected in the community after a massive 18,904 tests on Sunday. Drive in COVID testing at Sullivan Nicholades in Bowen Hills on Monday, January 11, 2021. Picture: John Gass But by the afternoon, Queensland Health had revealed the hotel cleaner s partner had since tested positive - with the case to be officially labelled as having been acquired in the community. Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young said the result was unsurprising due to the more contagious nature of the UK mutant variant - which the cleaner was diagnosed with last week.