Queensland Health ‘urgently’ testing woman who breached hospital quarantine

Health authorities are urgently testing a woman who breached quarantine orders in the middle of the night, hoping she hasn’t infected the community.

A woman who breached strict quarantine orders at a Brisbane hospital will be tested repeatedly as authorities fear she may have infected the community.

She was identified as being a close contact of a known case and was isolating at the Princess Alexandra Hospital amid the Greater Brisbane lockdown.

But the woman managed to leave the facility on Thursday and reportedly spent a few hours in the community before police escorted her back to the hospital.

Queensland Police’s Deputy Commissioner Steve Gollschewski said the woman left the hospital about 3am, and was later found at New Farm.

RELATED: Queensland’s mystery cluster solved

Dr Young believes there is minimal risk to the community following the breach. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Dan Peled

Chief health officer Jeannette Young said the woman had already returned a negative test but was being monitored to ensure she didn’t pose a risk to the community.

“I asked them to urgently do another test on her,” Dr Young told reporters on Friday morning.

“I’m expecting that result soon. So, if she’s negative again, and then we’ll test her again three days after that.

“Then there’s absolutely no risk. But I really think it’s very low risk.”

On Friday, health authorities said they believe they solved the mystery connection between the two Brisbane clusters which triggered a snap lockdown.

The Sunshine State reported one new locally acquired case on Friday — a historical infection of a nurse who worked at the Princess Alexandra Hospital.

It is assumed this nurse was infected by the same returning traveller being treated at the Brisbane hospital as the original infection in a doctor on March 10.

This nurse did not fall ill, but passed the deadly virus on to her partner who then became the source of the cluster which spread across Brisbane’s inner north.

“So this is yet another nurse who has unfortunately, through doing nothing wrong, has contracted the infection from a gentleman who is clearly a superspreader,” Dr Young said.

“So then it spread within that network and then we had the gentleman come forward, just out of the blue, and get tested.

“Due to all of those people doing what they did, so effectively, we found that cluster. And we’ve got it under control.”

Originally published as Queensland Health ‘urgently’ testing woman who breached hospital quarantine