Coronavirus Qld: Case update as restrictions toughen following cluster blow-out
Health Minister Steven Miles has confirmed the Darling Downs region will be subject to tightened restrictions as the state records four new COVID-19 cases. It comes as concerns grow over the emerging virus cluster that blew out to 16 people late on Friday.
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Health Minister Steven Miles has confirmed Queensland has recorded four new cases in the past 24 hours, after four more correctional staff tested positive on Friday, causing tougher restrictions to be extended to the Gold Coast and a rugby union club to go into lockdown.
All four new cases announced on Saturday are related to the outbreak at the Queensland Corrective Services Academy, while three of those four cases relate to household transmission, Mr Miles said.
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“We’ve always said all along that households are one of the highest risk of transmission, it’s very hard to quarantine in a household,” he said.
“It underlines how important it is that we have restricted the number of people in households.
“It also underlines why it was so important why we brought in hotel quarantine.”
Only 10 people are currently allowed in homes across wider Brisbane and in the Gold Coast, with Mr Miles announcing that the areas under tightened restrictions will now expand to include the Darling Downs.
As a result, from 8am Monday, only 10 people will be allowed inside homes and at non-Covid safe venues across the Darling Downs region.
Mr Miles urged everyone at community sport this weekend to remember social distancing.
Queensland Corrective Services Commissioner Peter Martin said five positive cases are now linked to the training academy, due to a direct link through the Wacol Detention Centre.
Prisons are currently in stage four lockdown.
“They know we are doing this to keep them safe,” he said.
“My great hope is that this is short lived...but I have a lack of options.”
There are now 24 active cases in the state.
Mr Miles said 18763 tests were conducted in the past 24 hours.
Mr Miles said the situation around the pregnant Ballina woman who travelled 750km to Sydney rather than come to Queensland, and subsequently lost one of her twin babies died, was “very tragic”.
He said there are no border restrictions that restrict hospitals and aeromedical evacuation services from saving lives.
It comes as Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young announced Friday morning three more people associated with the Queensland Corrective Services Academy had contracted the virus, but The Courier-Mail can reveal a fourth person tested positive later that afternoon. That person has been included as one of the four cases announced by Mr Miles this morning.
Two of the officers work at Arthur Gorrie jail, a remand centre for offenders awaiting trial.
The latest case would take the Academy cluster to five after a trainer tested positive on Wednesday, sending the state's prisons north to Rockhampton into an unprecedented lockdown.
Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young said the Brisbane Youth Detention Centre and Queensland Corrective Services Academy cases were still considered two separate clusters, but she expected they would be linked.
She said because two of the new cases lived on the Gold Coast the restrictions put in place for the greater Brisbane area last weekend after a 77-year-old woman who worked at the detention centre tested positive would be extended south.
“The reason being that all of these cases we have seen related to the corrections training centre have been in younger people who’ve had ... very mild symptoms, extremely mild symptoms and I’m not quite sure of how it’s spread within that centre, who’s the primary case because of the mild nature of symptoms,” she said.
“It is community transmission and they have been out in the community so there is a real risk they’ve spread it in the Gold Coast.”
From 8am today, only 10 people will be allowed inside and outside for gatherings on the Gold Coast.
One of the new cases played rugby union for the Southern Bay Cyclones First 15 team, based at Redland Bay, last Friday.
Club president Will Baker said the club would remain closed until the cleaning process is finished and away games would not be played this weekend.
“The player is in good health but out of respect for him and the team we have decided not to play this weekend,” Mr Baker said.
The Courier-Mail has been told anyone who went to the Wacol training Academy has been now told to self-isolate and get tested.
“They can’t determine who is patient zero, the Academy is deemed ‘the case’,” an officer said.
“Anyone who has been to the Academy is now a ‘close contact’ of the case.”
“If they’ve been at the Academy they are deemed a close contact and must self-isolate for 14 days.”
Three of the people, all aged in their 30s, came into contact with the trainer.
Two live at Pimpama and the other at Forest Lakes.
Dr Young said two of the new cases were in the facility’s dining room when it’s thought they came into contact with the original case. The third attended a training day.
Dr Young said contact tracers were still doing their work in relation to the latest cases and it wasn’t known how the cluster was sparked.
“... there’s still a lot of work to do,” she said.
But she said it looked like the cluster was confined to people who had attended the centre.
She said she did not consider these cases to mark a “second wave” for Queensland.
“But this is concerning, it is an outbreak,” she said.