COVID-19 infected northern beaches woman could close Queensland border to Sydney

Queensland health authorities are scrambling to trace the contacts of a woman in her 50s from Sydney’s northern beaches who flew to Brisbane before testing positive to COVID-19.

Queensland Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young. Picture: Tertius Pickard

Queensland health authorities are scrambling to trace the contacts of a woman in her 50s from Sydney’s northern beaches who flew to Brisbane before testing positive for COVID-19.

Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young has closed the state’s border to the northern beaches region and said it was possible the rest of greater Sydney could be locked out before Christmas if the cluster spread rapidly.

Anyone who arrives in Queensland from Saturday and has been in the northern beaches will be forced to pay to enter mandatory hotel quarantine for two weeks.

“This is a rapidly evolving situation in the northern beaches and could well expand through other parts of Sydney,” Dr Young said. “But while (the new cases) are linked and there isn’t community spread in those (other Sydney) localities, then they won’t be declared hotspots.”

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk cut her beach holiday short on Friday to warn that people should reconsider travelling to and from Sydney, particularly from the northern beaches.

“It is a rapidly growing situation which we are all keeping a very close eye on,” she said.

“But at this stage, we will continue to observe that hotspot regime that has been consistently followed throughout Australia.”

The woman in her 50s, who was wearing a mask, flew into Brisbane on Virgin flight VA95 on Wednesday morning, before hiring a car and driving to the outer southern suburb of Eight Mile Plains to have lunch at the Glen Hotel.

Dr Young said health authorities were contact-tracing anyone near the woman on the flight or at the hotel for lunch.

She then travelled to the Sunshine Coast and checked into a hotel overnight, but only had contact with the hotel’s receptionist.

A friend of the woman got in contact to tell her about the developing cluster on the northern beaches, Dr Young said.

NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant said her state’s tracers contacted the woman after finding out she had been at the ­Avalon RSL. The woman was tested at Brisbane’s Prince Charles Hospital on Thursday and given advice by health authorities about how to safely drive straight back to Sydney in a new hire car.

Dr Young said she was confident that her state authorities could reach everyone the woman had contact with in Queensland.