Another Covid-positive truckie infectious in community for two days

A Brisbane private school has been shut after a 13-year-old student tested positive for Covid-19. The new case comes as Queensland reinstates its border bubble with NSW.

Queensland has recorded a new locally acquired case which is under investigation.

The case is a 13-year-old girl from St Thomas More College at Sunnybank. She attended school over the past few days.

Students at the school have been sent home, with all students and staff told to quarantine for the next 14 days, unless advised otherwise.

Household members of those people will also need to isolate for 14 days.

Another case has been recorded on a vessel offshore.

Roads backed up with hundreds of cars as parents scramble to pick up their kids at St Thomas More College in Sunnybank. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Sarah Marshall

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the information about the student had just come to hand and urged anyone with any symptoms to get tested.

She said, however, something that did give her some confidence in relation to the new case was that the students were all wearing masks, as opposed to the previous Indooroopilly cluster where students were not yet required to wear masks.

There are now 21 active cases in Queensland, while 23,807 vaccines were administered in the past 24 hours.

New vaccination hub at Mount Warren Park opens tomorrow. #covid19https://t.co/9S20tjcb3R

— Annastacia Palaszczuk (@AnnastaciaMP) September 10, 2021

The new case comes as the Premier announced the NSW-Queensland border bubble would be reinstated, with students and essential workers allowed to cross into Queensland from 12 NSW local government areas where restrictions willl ease on Saturday.

Chief health officer Jeannette Young said Queenslanders who meet one of the reasons to cross the border can go down into NSW and similarly for those residents living across the border.

She said anyone coming across the border either way from Queensland or New South Wales requires at least one dose of the vaccine to be able to get through.

She also clarified that an essential worker is anyone who can’t reasonably work from home and that workers needed to have that conversation with their employer.

Parents and staff at the gates trying to organise collection in kids at St Thomas More College in Sunnybank. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Sarah Marshall

“Any symptoms at all… come forward and get tested and secondly the thing we can do to protect ourselves the most … is to get vaccinated,” she said.

Deputy Premier Steven Miles said the border bubble would revert to the last border setting.

He said the arrangements would come into effect from 1am on Monday.

The news comes as NSW recorded 1542 new cases overnight and nine more deaths.

Meanwhile, there are also fears of further community transmission in Brisbane after a Covid-positive NSW truck driver spent two days infectious on the southside this week, with a public health alert issued late last night across dozens of locations including a Westfield shopping centre.

Contact tracing locations at Archerfield included a BP, while Grill’d and Cinnabon at Westfield Garden City at Upper Mount Gravatt were also identified as close contact venues.

Chief health officer Jeannette Young said she was concerned both about the truck driver and the student.

She said she was notified about the truck driver, a man in his 20s, on Thursday.

He has had one dose of the vaccine and was infectious in the community on Sunday September 5 and Monday September 6.

Dr Young said people needed to check the list of exposure sites and get tested.

She said she assumed it was the Delta variant.

The new truckie case is the latest in a string of freight drivers to unintentionally bring Covid into Queensland, with a 10-year-old boy linked to another truckie testing positive on Thursday.

Westfield Garden City Shopping is on the contact tracing list. Picture: Kristy Muir

The boy was the brother of a four-year-old girl from Beenleigh who tested positive on the weekend.

Dr Young said health authorities would be looking at how to better process truck and freight drivers as it remains one of the greatest risks to Delta crossing the border.

She said it would be difficult given the thousands of drivers who come across every day.

“There are a lot of truck drivers, thousands and thousands cross the border every day, and to hold them up would be difficult but we are looking at it,” she said.

The Premier, Deputy Premier and chief health officer were speaking from the new Mount Warren Park Sports Centre on Friday, with Ms Palaszczuk saying the site would begin mass vaccinations there from Saturday.

Mr Miles said the vaccine hubs had been very popular with 300 people expected to be vaccinated on Saturday at the new hub.

Meanwhile 202 people were placed into domestic hotel quarantine on Thursday with 124 being returning Queenslanders.

Originally published as Another Covid-positive truckie infectious in community for two days