This was published 4 years ago
Three cases linked to school as students at another plead to go home
By Lydia Lynch and Matt Dennien
A third case of COVID-19 has been detected at a school south-west of Brisbane as Queensland added more cases to a growing cluster.
The student at Staines Memorial College in Redbank Plains and a healthcare worker in her 30s were the two new cases reported in the state on Wednesday, Health Minister Steven Miles said in a social media update on Wednesday morning.
Barriers on the Queensland-NSW border.Credit:
On Sunday, a senior student at the school was confirmed to be carrying the virus, with an announcement the campus would close for two weeks for cleaning and testing to take place.
The new cases are close contacts of previous patients and grow the Brisbane Youth Detention Centre cluster to 28 cases.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said authorities were "very comfortable" with the fact that the cases were able to be linked to others, as testing figures remained high.
"The number of tests conducted in the past 24 hours is 18,151, so that is great news," she said.
It comes after Edens Landing State School, south of Brisbane, carried out a deep clean following a visit from a confirmed case to the after-hours care centre on the grounds last Thursday.
Meanwhile, a Brisbane private school has launched an appeal for the Queensland government to extend travel exemptions to its boarding school students whose families live in northern NSW.
Stuartholme School, an all-girls Catholic boarding school in the city's inner west, posted the video to its official Facebook page on Tuesday night.
In a video captioned "a call for justice", a series of students from northern New South Wales face the camera to plead with the government to grant them exemptions to travel home.
"We are in year 7 and this is our first year of boarding," one girl said.
"It is heartbreaking enough not knowing when we are going to see our families again and hug our pets."
A trio of year 12 students said they would "dearly love for our parents to see us graduate and go to formal".
'We appreciate that Queensland needs to stay safe but we would all really like to go home," one girl said.
"As much as our physical health matters, our mental health matters too. We may not have a voice but we will not go unheard," another said.
"Agricultural workers have an exemption, but most of us live on properties too, so why don’t we have an exemption too?"
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