Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has announced that Greater Brisbane will go into a three-day lock hard lockdown from 5:00pm today after four new cases of COVID-19 were recorded from community transmission, two of which were linked to the 26-year-old landscaper from Stafford who tested positive to the highly infectious UK strain on Thursday night. This means that seven community cases are now linked to this cluster:
“Two are known cases of one of the previous people, then we have two under investigation but we believe one of them is a nurse from the PA hospital,” Ms Palaszczuk said.
“Now what this says to us is the fact that there are now more community transmission and these people have been out and about in the community.
“And that is of now concern to Queensland Health and of course concern to me”…
“This is the UK strain. It is highly infectious,” she said.
“We need to do this now to avoid a longer lockdown.
“This will also enable our health authorities to get on top of the contact tracing.
Under the lockdown, schools will close from tomorrow and people in Greater Brisbane will only be allowed to leave their homes for essential reasons like grocery shopping, exercise, work and medical care. Masks will also be made mandatory.
Let’s hope Queensland gets on top of the situation pronto so that the Easter school holidays can proceed as planned. Otherwise, the travel plans of thousands will be thrown into jeopardy, dealing another death blow to the tourism industry.
