Queenslanders who have visited Byron Bay are ordered to stay at home for a week after an infectious man from Sydney visited the tourist hotspot as the state records three new cases
- Queensland announced three new cases on Tuesday at its daily update
- Queenslanders who had been to border zone NSW LGAs must stay at home
- The 'Indooroopilly cluster' appears to be under control in Greater Brisbane
- Health authorities want testing rates to increase in Cairns for lockdown to end
Queensland recorded three new cases on Tuesday, as Cairns in the state's far north entered its second day of lockdown and enforcement of border restrictions with NSW was tightened.
The three cases are all linked to the original Indooroopilly cluster and were in home quarantine, including a Brisbane Boys Grammar School student, an Ironside State School student, and a household contact of two known cases from Brisbane Boys Grammar.
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced an increased police presence on the Queensland-NSW border to ensure people were not travelling between the two states.
Chief health officer Dr Jeannette Young confirmed that the man who had travelled from Sydney to Byron Bay had not entered Queensland, as had been speculated in initial reports on his movements.
'New South Wales has declared four of the LGAs in the border zone that we have in place as hot spots and have put in place stay-at-home orders for those four LGAs,' she said.
'It is really important that anyone in Queensland who has been any of those for LGAs since or on 31 July when the man drove up from Sydney to Byron Bay while infectious, that you now are bound by those same [stay-at-home] requirements.'
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the state may 'go harder' on border restrictions with NSW as the Delta variant spread north
Cairns residents queue for Covid-19 tests at a Queensland Medical Laboratories testing centre on the Cairns Esplanade on Monday
Cairns Lagoon salt water swimming facility is closed as the city entered three days of lockdown yesterday
Deputy Commissioner Steve Gollschewski said 64 vehicles had been turned around at the Queensland-NSW border yesterday as he flagged changes to border passes in the wake of the positive case in Byron Bay.
'We want to see the numbers of vehicles dropping significantly across the border and only those that have essential purposes and proper exemptions coming across,' he said.
Ms Palaszczuk said 4.200 Covid tests had been conducted in Cairns in the past 24 hours.
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.
A woman exercises on the Cairns Esplanade yesterday on the city's first day a three-day lockdown
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."
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