Queensland lockdown to end at 6pm tonight
Annastacia Palaszczuk has confirmed the Brisbane lockdown will end at 6pm tonight as scheduled, but warns the state is “not out of the woods yet”.
Annastacia Palaszczuk has confirmed the Brisbane and Moreton Bay lockdown will end at 6pm tonight as scheduled, but warns the state is “not out of the woods yet”.
The Queensland Premier made the announcement after ominously delaying her press conference by an hour-and-a-half, to 12pm.
The state recorded five new locally acquired cases today.
“Can I thank everyone for doing that extra day that we asked people to do – that gave our contact tracers that extra time that was desperately needed,” she said.
“So the lockdown will end at 6pm tonight. But we are not out of the woods yet.”
Ms Palaszczuk said there were three things she was asking people in south-east Queensland and Townsville to do over the next two weeks – get tested if they have any symptoms at all, wear their mask at all times, and check in using QR codes.
“We’re all in this together and we’ve got to have our trust in one another, and we’ve got to act as a community together,” she said.
The fast-moving, highly transmissible Delta strain of Covid-19 saw Ms Palaszczuk enforce a 72-hour lockdown for 1.5 million residents earlier this week.
While on Friday she announced that stay-at-home orders would end for large parts of the state from 6pm, there was festering uncertainty off the back of a new case reported late yesterday, detected in a Sunshine Coast man in his 50s.
Ms Palaszczuk said on Saturday that man was likely linked to the Portuguese restaurant cluster.
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“The man in his 50s returned a positive result today, after becoming symptomatic on 30 June 2021 and undertaking a test on 1 July 2021,” Health Minister Yvette D’Ath wrote to Twitter Friday afternoon.
Hours earlier, the premier said people in Noosa, Sunshine Coast, Ipswich, Logan, Redlands, Gold Coast, Scenic Rim, Lockyer Valley, Somerset, Townsville and Palm Island would be released from their three-day lockdown as intended.
Residents in those areas are this morning on the edge of their seats awaiting an update from the Premier, who is expected to front the media on Saturday morning.
On Friday, she announced the lockdown would be extended for at least another 24 hours for Brisbane and Moreton Bay after a mother and daughter from Carindale contracted the virus from an unknown source.
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“They have been out quite extensively around Brisbane,” Ms Palaszczuk told reporters.
Three other cases of community transmission were announced on Friday, separate to the late afternoon Sunshine Coast case.
Ms D’Ath said the Sunshine Coast man was “only in the community while potentially infectious for two days before the lockdown began, at his workplace, and briefly during lockdown”.
The man works at the University of the Sunshine Coast’s Sippy Downs campus, and was at work on June 28 and 29, the Health Minister added.
“He had minimal contact with others so it will not be listed as a contact tracing site, but as always, anyone with symptoms, come forward for testing immediately,” she wrote.
She asked people in Caloundra, Mooloolaba, Sippy Downs or Maroochydore to get tested if they experienced any symptoms.
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