Public health alert over new coronavirus case

A public health alert has been issued over Queensland’s latest case of coronavirus, with the person flying to Brisbane on a Qantas flight in recent weeks.

A PUBLIC health alert has been issued over Queensland’s latest case of coronavirus, with the person flying to Brisbane on a Qantas flight in recent weeks.

The case was the only new instance of COVID-19 to be recorded in Queensland overnight and takes the state’s total cases to 1034.

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Health Minister Steven Miles said the person had travelled overseas and said their travel was “related to” a cruise ship known to have COVID-19 circulating on it.

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He said a public health alert has been issued after the person flew on Qantas flight QF 614 to Brisbane on April 22. It’s believed the flight was from Melbourne.

Mr Miles urged anyone who was on the flight to contact 13HEALTH for advice.

The one new case overnight ends a week of low numbers of new COVID-19 cases.

Mr Miles said there were more Queenslanders recovering from the virus. He said there were now 64 active cases. He said there were 10 people in hospital, four of who are in intensive care.

There have been 1034 confirmed cases so far in the state, with 965 patients recovered, according to figures released by the Palaszczuk Government today.

That is out of 113,601 tests for the COVID-19 virus.

Restrictions were lifted today on retail trade, with Health Minister Steven Miles today saying there had been no incidents involving shoppers breaching social distancing rules.

“From what I’ve seen Queenslanders are doing a great job of complying with the rules,” he said.

“I’ve driven past a number of retail outlets with people queued outside 1.5m apart, obviously being told how many people can be in the store at any given time.

“Here at the (Botanical) Gardens people certainly seem to be spreading out and that’s exactly what we want to see.”

He said it would take two weeks before the Government could see any impacts of the changes in restrictions from this weekend on cases.

“If we don’t see growth in our figures then that’s fantastic and we will be able to consider further relaxations. If we do see numbers increase then we will need to consider whether this easing will stay in place.

“So really it’s open to Queenslanders. If we don’t mess this up then we will be able to get more of our freedoms back.

“But if we don’t comply with the rules then more cases will happen, more cases will be found and unfortunately we will have to go back to those really strict restrictions.”