Mystery Queensland Covid case out and about for a week

A landscaper who mysteriously contracted COVID-19 in Brisbane could have spread the virus for a week before he went into quarantine.

Queensland Chief Health Officer Dr Jeanette Young. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Dan Peled

A 26-year-old landscaper who mysteriously contracted COVID-19 in Brisbane, triggering new restrictions only days out from Easter, has the hyper-infectious UK strain and could have spread the virus for a week before he went into quarantine.

Queensland Health is scrambling to pinpoint the source of the infection amid fears it could seed an outbreak and disrupt holiday travel at a crucial juncture for the state’s battered tourism industry.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said genomic testing showed the new case was linked to a cluster earlier this month that led to the infection of a doctor at Brisbane’s Princess Alexandra Hospital. While concerning given that outbreak involved the UK variant, health authorities will be relieved they are not confronting the prospect of the virus spreading from an unknown source.

In those circumstances the Queensland government could have been forced to further ­tighten the COVID restrictions reintroduced in Brisbane on Friday just as airlines, hotels and hospitality services were gearing up for Easter.

Contact tracers are trying to track down people potentially exposed to the infected Brisbane man while he worked, shopped, ate out and enjoyed takeaway ice-cream unaware he had the virus.

Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young warned those impacted could number in the hundreds. “He’s a young man who has been out and about in his normal life, so yes, I am sure has had contact with a lot of people,” she said. “I don’t know where he has got it from and that person he’s got it from could also be out and about in the community spreading the infection.”

Announcing that aged-care homes, hospitals and prisons would be locked down in Brisbane from noon on Friday, Ms Palaszczuk urged anyone with cold or flu-like symptoms to isolate at home and be tested.

The alarm was sounded after the man tested positive on Thursday, having become “reasonably unwell” on Monday, Dr Young said. Fortunately, he had stayed home from work for the two ­intervening days.

His flatmates in the northside suburb of Stafford were in isolation, while he was being monitored in hospital in line with Queensland’s policy to admit anyone found to have the virus. He may have been infectious since last Friday, March 19, Dr Young said.

On Saturday, March 20, he spent more than two hours from noon at the Westfield Carindale shopping centre before visiting an organics store in Newmarket and buying ice cream later that night at the Baskins-Robbins outlet in nearby Everton Park.

On Sunday, March 21, he was at the Gasworks Plaza in Newstead in inner Brisbane and lunched between 12.30pm and 3.10pm at Mama’s Italian Restaurant in bayside Redcliffe.

On Monday, having completed his shift on a landscaping job in Paddington, he went through the driveway of a Mexican takeaway and visited a Bunnings store near his home in Stafford.

Before being tested on Thursday, he made a 10-minute stop at the Aldi supermarket in Stafford.