Health Minister and Premier 'sorry' for Blackwater scare, but without regret

The two most senior members of Queensland's government have apologised to the family of a man who was believed to have been the country's youngest COVID-19 victim, after a coroner found he did not have the virus.

Nathan Turner, 30, was found dead at his Blackwater home in central Queensland last week and a post-mortem test returned positive to COVID-19.

Queensland Deputy Premier and Health Minister Steven Miles said while he was sorry for adding to the family's grief, he would not have done anything differently.Credit: AAP

His death sparked a massive health response, with fever clinics set up and public experts flown in from Brisbane.

Authorities had been left baffled as to how Mr Turner could have contracted the virus given he had not left the small coal mining town, which had never recorded a case of coronavirus, for months.

Deputy Premier Steven Miles, who is also the state's health minister, personally apologised to Mr Turner's family and friends after multiple tests on the man's lungs and airways had found no traces of the virus.

"I know it’s been incredibly distressing for them and to have to grieve under these circumstances, under this level of scrutiny, in some cases in quarantine, has only compounded that tragedy and their grief and to them I am so deeply sorry," he said.

"Our ability to control this virus requires us to respond rapidly to every single positive test; we have to treat every positive test as though it is a positive case."

Mr Miles said while he was sorry for adding to the family's grief, he would not have done anything differently.

"I think we have to respond rapidly to every positive case and that is precisely what happened here," he said.

"As you can see, I am upset that this has caused distress to this man's partner and his family but I think, given that we had that positive test, it was largely unavoidable."

Speaking to reporters in Townsville, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk also said she was "very sorry" for the impact on Mr Turner's family and thanked the broader community for co-operating.

"We have to take the health advice at the time and if we don’t act and it ends up being worse then we will be negligent for not acting."

Queensland’s chief health officer Dr Jeannette Young said it may never be known whether Mr Turner ever had the virus.

The most sensitive and accurate test, conducted a few hours after his death, returned a positive and although up to a dozen subsequent tests returned negative, these were less reliable.

"Unfortunately I don’t think we will ever know the answer to that question. There are two potential answers here: one is that it was a false positive, the other is that it was a true positive, and we won’t know which it was," Dr Young said.

"But I am confident about the actions that were taken on that night to protect the community of Blackwater.

"I don’t believe there was any more that could have been done that night.

"I had a positive test result in the context of a gentleman who had a four-week history of flu-like illness."

Dr Young said while it was "extremely rare" to get a false positive, "extremely rare things happen".

"There is always going to be a problem collecting a specimen post-mortem - that’s always going to be difficult," she said.

Dr Young also praised the "tremendous response" of residents - 605 of whom had come forward for testing and returned negative results.