Queensland border reopens to Melbourne, but travel warning issued for NSW
Queensland has recorded one new local case of Covid-19 - spread among diners at a Brisbane restaurant - as authorities issue a NSW travel warning after the Bondi cluster exploded by 10 cases overnight.
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Queensland has recorded a new case of community transmission while the Premier has announced when the state’s borders will reopen to Melbourne.
It comes as authorities issue a NSW travel warning after Sydney’s Bondi cluster grew by 10 cases overnight to 21 cases.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the new community case was a person in home quarantine who had visited a restaurant at the Brisbane Portuguese Family Centre in Ellen Grove, a known exposure site.
The case is linked to the flight attendant who tested positive on Sunday.
Another two cases have been detected in hotel quarantine.
Meanwhile, it was announced that Queensland would reopen its border to Melbourne residents at 1am Friday.
However, health authorities have urged Queenslanders not to travel to NSW, particularly Greater Sydney, after a number of new exposure sites were announced overnight.
Chief health officer Dr Jeannette Young said the new case of community transmission was a man aged in his 60s.
“He went into home quarantine the next day when he was contacted,” she said.
Dr Young said all of the 36 people who attended the restaurant between 7-7.50pm on Saturday when the flight crew member attended had gone into home quarantine.
Dr Young said investigations were ongoing.
She said the man left the Ellen Grove restaurant late on Saturday night and was called at mid-Sunday about quarantining at home.
Contact tracers are speaking to him about whether he was out and about in the community on Sunday morning before being contacted.
Dr Young said preliminary investigations into how the flight crew members became infected suggested a quarantine staff member was involved.
“We’re looking at CCTV footage as we speak,” she said.
Dr Young said the staff member had escorted a man from Mongolia who had tested positive in the Four Points Hotel to an ambulance and then gone to the level of the hotel where the crew member was in quarantine.
“This is a very infectious virus. This is the Alpha variant. We know that it can transmit fairly easily,” she said.
It comes as Queensland health authorities investigate whether a quarantine worker transmitted the Covid-19 virus from an infected person staying at Brisbane’s Four Points Hotel to another guest on a different floor.
Genomic sequencing on Sunday confirmed a woman who spent four hours out and about in Brisbane at the weekend had the Alpha variant of the virus.
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