Locked-down Cairns waits on COVID-19 tests
Cairns residents are sweating on tests that will reveal if COVID-19 is spreading in the tourist city, as the NSW crisis inches closer to the Queensland border.
Authorities are hoping for a dramatic lift in testing numbers after a Cairns taxi driver was linked to an earlier Delta variant case involving a local marine pilot.
The taxi driver wasn't identified as a close contact until well after he drove the marine pilot to the Cairns airport.
The unvaccinated cabbie was infectious in the community for a total of 10 days, seven of them spent driving passengers around Cairns.
Since the driver tested positive on the weekend, contact tracers have been working overtime to ensure all his contacts is isolating.
Cairns and Yarrabah residents are currently subject to a three-day lockdown, which is due to end at 4pm on Wednesday if there's no sign of further infections.
At the opposite end of the state, a cluster centred on Brisbane schools appears to be under control. All of the four new locally acquired cases reported on Monday were linked to the so-called Indooroopilly cluster.
All were in isolation for the whole of their infectious periods.
Further south, Gold Coast authorities are on alert for any cases beyond the one that is known to authorities.
It's also possible there could be a link between Queensland and an infected man who has sent communities in northern NSW into lockdown.
The Byron Shire, Richmond Valley, Lismore and Ballina Shire local government areas went into a snap lockdown at 6pm on Monday after a positive case from Sydney travelled to Byron Bay.
Queensland authorities were told about the case on Monday amid reports the man had also been to the Gold Coast.
Samples have been sent to Queensland for genomic sequencing that should reveal if his infection is linked to any cases north of the border.
Regardless of where the man became infected, NSW has reassured Queensland he was not in the state at any point during his infectious period.
"We continue to monitor the situation in NSW every day. If there is a need for tighter border controls, we will implement them," Queensland Health said in a statement late on Monday.
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk on Monday told reporters: "The further north the virus travels is alarming for us."
