Advice 'within hours' for Victorians holidaying in Queensland

"Obviously if you're from Victoria and you're in Brisbane, the rules in Brisbane apply to you. This issue about bolting home may not be one of the four reasons to leave home."

He said, for those Victorians wanting to travel to Queensland, "that won't be possible, I wouldn't have thought".

The Age revealed on Friday that a mutant strain of the coronavirus which scientists believe was a precursor to the UK variant escaped hotel quarantine in Victoria in June during the state's second wave.

Mr Andrews said: "Within the amateur epidemiological picture I can give you, everything's a precursor to the current strain, it's the same virus ... the UK virus five, six months ago wasn't 50 per cent more infectious."

Scientists at the Doherty Institute managed to isolate the variant and have spent several months studying it. Their data, which has not yet been peer-reviewed or published, suggests that the variant seen in Victoria bound more tightly to human cells, making it harder to contain than the initial strain of SARS-CoV-2.

Victoria's public health team will also provide advice to the Andrews government on what the three-day lockdown would mean for Victorian residents who are holidaying in regional and rural Queensland, as well as Victorians who returned home from Brisbane after January 2.

Queensland Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young on Friday asked anybody who had been in the Greater Brisbane area since January 2, but are now elsewhere in the state, to self-isolate.

Mr Andrews said the Queensland government had made a "very difficult call" to enter a three-day lockdown, but urged all states and territories to learn from Victoria's "bitter experience" of the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic, and strengthen hotel quarantine screening procedures.

He said he believed national cabinet would adopt Victoria's processes of testing flight crew before they board a plane, quarantining air crew and testing every day hotel quarantine staff.

"Given the extremely infectious and contagious nature of this UK variant, it is very, very important that we do everything we can, never making it 100 per cent risk free, but each additional layer is about keeping each of us safe," Mr Andrews said.

It comes as Victoria recorded no new local cases of COVID-19, and one in an international traveller.

The results come from more than 23,000 tests. There are a further 10,000 test results still to come from yesterday, which were delayed by technical issues.

Mr Andrews, who returned from holiday earlyto attend the national cabinet meeting, said the IT problem affecting the remaining test results had now been fixed.

Mr Andrews said there was a hardware problem at Dorevitch Pathology that was rectified at 3am. The remaining 10,000 test results were now being communicated to the people who were awaiting them, he said.

"Apologies to those who have waited a little longer than normal… but those results are now being fed out to people," he said.

"The testing will be around 33,000 (total for Friday), which is a very strong number. It was a hardware issue, not software, an actual machine wasn’t working as it should have been."

The national cabinet meeting, which has been reconvened a month earlier than planned, will decide whether to tighten precautions on international arrivals over fears travellers from the UK.

Among the ideas expected to be discussed is whether airline staff should be tested and quarantined by every state when they arrive in Australia, as they are in Victoria.

Meanwhile, Greater Brisbane will enter a three-day lockdown after genomic testing confirmed a casual cleaner at a Brisbane hotel quarantine site was infected with a more contagious strain of COVID-19 originating from the United Kingdom.

Premier Daniel Andrews said on Thursday that he had returned early from holiday leave in order to persuade his fellow premiers and the Prime Minister to adopt Victoria's position on the testing of flight crew and hotel quarantine staff.

He said a change to national policy could potentially "stop what's happened in the northern beaches" in the future.

"We are treating flight crew no different to returning travellers … in the context of the UK strain which is a super-infectious strain of this virus," Mr Andrews said.

"Not if, but when someone finishes up contracting the virus because of their work in hotel quarantine, the virus will have a one-day jump on us, not a week, not 10 days … We need to test staff every day, or at least multiple times per week.

"That type of arrangement stops what's happened in the northern beaches, and therefore stops what's happening in Melbourne. A problem in Sydney is a problem here, and a problem for the nation, and vice versa."

The Age revealed the mutant strain of the coronavirus which scientists believe was a precursor to the highly infectious British variant escaped hotel quarantine in Victoria in June during the state's second wave but the public was not told about it at the time.

Professor Damian Purcell, head of the molecular virology laboratory at the Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity in Melbourne, said the new strain had infected at least 37 people in Victoria before being brought under control by Victoria's lockdown.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said earlier this week national cabinet would consider a proposal "to further strengthen the COVID safety of end-to-end international travel processes" that he requested Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly review through the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee.

With Noel Towell