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Brisbane lockdown: Eight new cases of community transmission overnight
By Lydia Lynch and Cloe Read
Eight new local cases of COVID-19 have been added to Brisbane’s growing outbreak, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has confirmed.
Of those, five were guests at a bachelorette party in Byron Bay and were infected by a nurse and her sister who tested positive on Monday.
Ms Palaszczuk said on Tuesday she believed there were two distinct coronavirus clusters, which spread from an unvaccinated doctor and nurse working at the Princess Alexandra Hospital.
Ten cases have been linked to the PA doctor cluster and eight cases to the nurse cluster since the start of the month.
Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young said genome testing revealed both health workers had been infected by separate returned travellers being treated at the hospital.
The doctor was infected by a man who arrived from Qatar on March 5 and the nurse was believed to be infected on March 23 by a traveller from India.
Dr Young said all local cases detected since the start of the latest outbreak had been linked back to the two clusters and all were the B117 variant, known as the UK strain.
People wear face masks in Queen Street Mall in the Brisbane CBD after Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced a three-day lockdown for Brisbane.Credit: Getty
She believed the nurse contracted the virus while working a night shift on March 23, although the nurse did not have direct contact with infected patients that night.
“I don’t know if she got it directly from that patient because she wasn’t working with COVID cases that night, but we have to confirm that, or whether she’s got it from someone else in that hospital,” she said.
Dr Young said one of the positive cases who attended the bachelorette party as an entertainer had since tested positive.
He visited an aged-care home at Mermaid Beach while contagious, but Dr Young said all residents had been vaccinated.
“He works as a tradie, and he did go to an aged-care facility in the Gold Coast ... the team down at the Gold Coast are organising to go to the facility today and vaccinate the staff,” Dr Young said.
Dr Young said positive cases had now been linked to Hervey Bay, Gladstone, Brisbane, the Gold Coast and Byron Bay.
She would monitor case numbers in those areas before deciding whether the greater Brisbane lockdown needed to be extended.
Ms Palaszczuk confirmed about 11 per cent of frontline health workers treating COVID-19 patients were yet to receive the first vaccine jab.
Only workers who have been given the first dose of the vaccine will be allowed to treat COVID-19 positive cases.
Health Minister Yvette D’Ath said the nurse was due to get her COVID vaccination this week.
Ms D’Ath said the amount of vaccine supplied by the Commonwealth did not all arrive on the first day, but it had been increased progressively.
“Over the last week we have given over 20,000 vaccinations, so we are ramping up very quickly,” Ms D’Ath said.
“We’ll of course have a look at what’s happened at the PA Hospital, we want to understand how these transmissions occur.”
The state government planned to have administered the first vaccine dose to all 37,000 frontline staff by April 4.
The 72-hour greater Brisbane shutdown was scheduled to end at 5pm on Thursday but health authorities could choose to extend that when they held a formal review on Wednesday evening.