Omicron outbreak puts strain on Brisbane Covid testing clinics
Residents are at breaking point as queues explode at Brisbane’s Covid testing clinics triggered by rising Omicron fears and an influx of interstate arrivals.
QLD News
Don't miss out on the headlines from QLD News. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Interstate arrivals coupled with the Omicron variant outbreak has left Brisbane testing clinics “going berserk”, as cars stretch down busy streets and wait times hit over an hour.
Drive-through Brisbane fever clinics, including 4Cyte Pathology Chermside and Sullivan Nicolaides at Herston, saw cars stretched for close to half a kilometre as of 9am on Wednesday morning.
A traffic controller at the Chermside clinic on Gympie Road said that they had seen a “phenomenal influx” of cars in the last few days.
Interstate traveller Marc Hood and his wife Michelle, who moved to Brisbane from ACT, lined up on Wednesday morning as part of the mandatory day five PCR test.
“You just have to get it done,” said Mr Hood.
The Chermside clinic operates awkwardly on the busy Gympie Road, with waiting cars stretched along a local cul-de-sac and out on to the main road.
Nearby residents have been left frustrated by the location of the clinic, as busy wait times leave them without room to park or leave their house without walking
A resident, who wished to not be named, said that it had been a nightmare for her and her elderly mother who lived at the end of the cul-de-sac.
“Since the Omicron variant, that’s when it started going berserk,” she said about the site, which opened in September.
“They need to move the site, it’s just a nightmare trying to get in and out.”
One man said it took him four hours to get tested at the Ashgrove Baptist Church this morning.
He said he got there at 7am and didn’t reach the head of the queue until 11am.
“I couldn’t go after work last night - the only place open was the RBWH. The government has brought in these testing requirements but they haven’t put the resources in place.
“The queue went all the way down Waterworks Rd, around the church and wrapped around the church car park.”
He’ll never see me in my wedding dress
An inconsolable young bride-to-be is grimly arranging a funeral instead of putting the final touches on an Australia Zoo wedding with her soulmate following a freak crash that killed him as he worked.
The Kid Crisafulli: Spaghetti-eating champion’s meteoric rise in politics
The man tipped to be the next Queensland Premier was once known as ‘the fastest mouth in the North’ as former colleagues — and the spaghetti-eating champion himself — reflects on his career.