Authorities are investigating whether Brisbane’s outbreak has jumped to North Queensland after a new case was confirmed up there on Tuesday afternoon.
Contact tracing locations have been listed in Cairns, Trinity Beach and Yorkey’s Knob as well as a Qantas flight from Brisbane to Cairns on Thursday morning.
The new case has been reported by media as a male pilot who was fully vaccinated. Authorities were last night determining how the man became infected.
The fresh case took Tuesday’s infection tally to 17, with the other 16 cases linked to the Indooroopilly cluster.
The state is bracing for more COVID-19 cases on Wednesday as health authorities work to determine if the North Queensland infection poses a risk to the community.
The circumstances are currently being investigated and Queensland Health advised more information would be released at Wednesday’s press conference.
“Tests are currently being performed to determine whether there is any infection risk to the community,” it said in a statement.
The number of close contact exposure sites is approaching 150, with recent additions including Kmart, McDonalds and Aldi in Indooroopilly, a swim school in St Lucia and a netball court in Graceville, as well as a site on the Gold Coast.
Dr Young says high testing numbers are crucial with uncertainty remaining about how the outbreak is linked to the initial two cases who arrived from overseas in late June.
“It’s really important so that we can just make sure that we don’t have any other transmission events,” she said.
Just under 35,000 tests were reported in the 24-hour period to Tuesday morning.
There is still hope the lockdown that stretches from the southern border to Noosa will lift as planned at 4pm on Sunday.
“Everyone just stay at home if you can at all, and that way we’ll get through this, and we can lift on Sunday. That’s absolutely my aim,” Dr Young said.
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Lockdowns the ‘only option’ against Delta
The prime minister once lauded NSW’s insistence on staying open and managing COVID-19 outbreaks with testing and tracing, but he now says only snap lockdowns are capable of halting the Delta variant.
Scott Morrison said NSW’s “gold standard” for COVID-19 management was no longer fit for purpose due to Delta’s virulence.
Hard, fast lockdowns were now the sole order of the day and NSW’s attempt to manage its current outbreak before calling a lockdown wasn’t sufficient.
Attempts to slowly ramp up virus restrictions were now also ineffective.
Wednesday marks seven weeks since the first COVID-19 case of the Bondi cluster — an unvaccinated limousine driver transporting air crew.
“It is indeed true that for a very long period of time in NSW, they were able to manage cases as they arose by not having to go into lengthy and extraordinary lockdowns,” Mr Morrison said in Question Time.
“But the virus writes the rules.”
With Greater Sydney and surrounds approaching six weeks of lockdown and daily infections remaining stubbornly high, the state government is now looking to vaccination as a way out of the outbreak.
NSW recorded 199 new locally acquired cases in the 24 hours to 8pm on Monday, 82 of which were in the community while infectious.
The state government is aiming to have six million COVID-19 vaccine doses in arms by the end of the month to slightly ease lockdown rules.
But this would not be enough to do away with restrictions altogether.
Easing restrictions in September would also depend on the case numbers, which even Premier Gladys Berejiklian admitted were “anyone’s guess”.
The Sydney lockdown will linger until at least August 28.
-with AAP
