Queensland Health issues public health alert for Townsville, Cairns, Brisbane over new COVID case
Queensland has recorded one new case of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours. It comes as health authorities add to the list of places visited by a Townsville woman who tested positive in Melbourne this week.
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Queensland Health has issued a new public health alert for locations in Brisbane and Cairns visited by a Townsville woman who tested positive to the pandemic virus this week in Melbourne.
Contact tracers have expanded the list of venues the woman, in her 30s, visited before flying to Melbourne on October 7.
She was in Melbourne to receive medical treatment when she tested positive three days after arriving in Victoria.
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A public health alert has been issued for the Tha Fish restaurant in Cairns from 5.45pm to 8.30pm on October 3, the Vivo at Palm Cove between 5.15pm and 9pm on October 5 and the Georges Paragon Restaurant in Brisbane from 7.30pm on October 6.
Queensland Health has also asked people to be alert for symptoms of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, if they visited ICON Cancer Care in Townsville on September 30 between 9-9.30am.
Deputy Premier and Health Minister Steven Miles said on Thursday the woman was believed to have become infected while in Melbourne.
“But what we’ve done throughout is when there is ever room for doubt, we have taken the most cautious approach,” he said.
“That’s exactly what we are doing here. There is no need for anyone to be panicked at all. But the cost of doing a bit of extra testing and some contact tracing compared to the cost of an outbreak and having to lockdown, you just can’t compare the two. That’s why we take this approach.”
Mr Miles reported one new case of the virus in Queensland on Thursday – a man in his 40s who tested positive in hotel quarantine in Cairns. That takes the number of confirmed cases of SARS-CoV-2 in the state since the start of the pandemic to 1162.
The latest case had travelled from Uganda through Dubai and Papua New Guinea.
“The individual concerned was in contact with 15 others on their arriving flight,” Mr Miles said. “They are all now considered close contacts but they were all already in hotel quarantine.
“There’s no great cause for concern from this case. If anything, it underlines just how effective our hotel quarantine program and our testing program is.”
In the latest 24-hour testing period, 5280 tests for the pandemic virus were analysed in Queensland, exceeding the State Government’s goal of 5000 tests a day.
“In Townsville, where we have been aiming to increase our testing rate, we did 242 tests, which is very good.”