Greater Brisbane will enter a hard lockdown from 6pm on Friday after a cleaner at a quarantine hotel was diagnosed with the highly contagious UK variant of COVID-19.
Residents in the council areas of Brisbane, Logan, Ipswich, Moreton Bay and Redlands will be required to stay at home until 6pm Monday except for essential work, exercise, essential shopping and to access healthcare.
Masks will also be mandated for people leaving home in the Greater Brisbane area.
“It is incredibly important in this time to stop the spread of this infectious UK strain. We must act immediately, we must act strongly and we have taken those strong measures today,” Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk told reporters on Friday morning.
Cafes, pubs and restaurants will be open only for take-away service.
Funerals will be restricted to 20 guests and weddings restricted to 10 guests.
There is a limit of two visitors in homes and people are allowed to exercise with one other.
People can enter Greater Brisbane during the lockdown period but are bound by the same restrictions.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the lockdown was a “wise call”.
“Wise call by Qld Premier @AnnastaciaMP to have a brief lockdown to enable Queensland health authorities to get on top of the UK strain case in Brisbane,” he tweeted.
“A big thanks in advance to everyone in greater Brisbane for their patience in coming days. This will buy much needed time.”
Tasmania responded to the news by declaring Greater Brisbane a high-risk area.
Any traveller arriving in Tasmania from Friday who has been in Greater Brisbane since 2 January will now need to quarantine for up to 14 days. People without “suitable premises” to quarantine in will be placed into a hotel.
Acting NSW premier John Barilaro said state authorities were working with their counterparts in Queensland but his state was not considering a hard border. But he said anyone already in transit from Greater Brisbane to NSW must abide by Queensland’s isolation rules, and act as if they had remained in place.
WA premier Mark McGowan announced his state would impose a hard border with the entire state of Queensland from midnight Friday, with travel only permitted with a police exemption.
South Australia has declared the Greater Brisbane area region a COVID-19 hotspot, with anyone arriving from midnight Friday required to go into quarantine for two weeks.
The Northern Territory Government has also declared Greater Brisbane a hotspot, starting immediately.
Chief Minister Michael Gunner said this means “anyone arriving in the Territory today from these regions will have to enter mandatory two-week quarantine”.
The cleaner is Australia’s first case of the more infectious variant of the coronavirus outside of quarantining returned overseas travellers.
Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly earlier said the situation in Queensland was concerning.
“We do know that we’ve had cases of the UK variant in our hotel quarantine system,” he told ABC RN.
“And we do know sometimes with a very complex system which relies on humans, mistakes can happen. That apparently is the case here.”
The hotel cleaner’s infection ended almost four months of zero locally-acquired cases in Queensland.
She visited several locations while potentially infectious and contact tracers are tracking her movements.
The woman travelled on a train from Altandi station to Roma Street station at 7am on 2 January, then returned on the 4pm service the same day.
She also visited Woolworths at the Calamvale Central Shopping Centre from 11am to 12pm on Sunday 3 January.
She was at Coles in Sunnybank Hills for 30 minutes from 7.30am on Tuesday 5 January and a newsagent at Sunnybank Hills Shopping Town from 8am to 8.15am on the same day.
Residents of Algester, Sunnybank Hills and Calamvale who have symptoms of the infection are especially urged to get tested as soon as possible.
Additional reporting by SBS News.
People in Australia must stay at least 1.5 metres away from others. Check your jurisdiction’s restrictions on gathering limits.
If you are experiencing cold or flu symptoms, stay home and arrange a test by calling your doctor or contact the Coronavirus Health Information Hotline on 1800 020 080. News and information is available in 63 languages at sbs.com.au/coronavirus.
Please check the relevant guidelines for your state or territory: NSW, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, Northern Territory, ACT, Tasmania.
