COVID-19 alert for Brisbane’s northside and Moreton Bay Region

There’s been one case of COVID-19 community transmission overnight, with a man from Stafford testing positive and being active in the community since last Friday. An alert has been issued for venues including a Redcliffe restaurant.

Health Minister and State Member for Redcliffe Yvette D'Ath has today confirmed the 26-year-old man was tested yesterday and has been infectious since last Friday.

Contact tracing is underway and Queensland Health will issue a Public Health Alert with the locations he has visited and times. They include:

•  Carindale Shopping Centre (Ramen Stop, K-Mary, Food Court and Health Food Shop) – 20 March at 11am

• Baskin Robbins, Everton Park – 20 March at 8pm

• Fresh Food Market, Newstead Gasworks – 21 March at 9.00am

• Mamma’s Italian Waterfront, Redcliffe – 21 March at 12.20pm

• Guzman and Gomez Drive-Thru, Stafford – 22 March at 12.30pm

•  Bunnings Stafford – 22 March at 1.00pm

• Aldi, Stafford – 25 March at 8.30am

• Nundah Respiratory Clinic – 25 March at 8.40am.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk says the new case should not cause alarm and urges Queenslanders to continue social distancing and practising good hygiene.

“From noon today, our aged care, our hospitals, our prisons, people caring for people with a disability, will be closed to visitors but this will be confined to the Brisbane City Council areas and Moreton,” she says.

“These are sensible precautions to look after our most vulnerable.”

Wear a mask

People in crowded areas in the Brisbane City area and Moreton Bay Region are being urged to wear a mask.

“If you’re going to a football match on the weekend. Wear a mask going into the venue. If you’re on a crowded train, put a mask on,” Ms Palaszczuk says.

She is also urging people to improve social distancing, which many had stopped doing, and to stop shaking hands.

“This is a timely reminder to everyone across Brisbane and the southeast and across Queensland that we need to keep up our social distancing, we need to keep making sure we’re doing our really good hand hygiene and we need to ensure we’re using our check-in app and leaving our details when we’re going to venues,” she says.

“It’s really important if you are sick or feeling unwell, to come and get tested.

“We really want people, especially over the next two to four days to come and get tested if you are feeling unwell and you have symptoms.”

Investigations continue

Queensland Chief Health Officer Dr Jeannette Young says Queensland Health is trying to find out how the case was acquired and genome sequencing was happening now. The results will be known later today or early tomorrow.

“Everyone knows exactly what they need to do and has done that brilliantly over the last year. So, we just need to put that back in place,” Dr Young says.

She is encouraging those who are vulnerable to stay at home for the next three days until more is known.

She also urged people to continue to adhere to indoor social distancing requirements and gather outdoors rather than indoors.

Anyone who is sick should stay at home and get tested.

“We don’t know where this virus is going to next pop up but as I’ve always said, if we can find the first case in the cluster, not the 40^th we’ll be able to get on top of it much, much more quickly,” she says.

“It is testing that will get us out of this particular incident as we have with other incidents.”

She says the man has been extremely helpful and if he remembers more locations, they will be added to the list.

“He’s a young man who has been out and about in the course of his normal life, so I’m sure he’s had contact with a lot of people,” Dr Young says.

She says at this stage, it was not known how he acquired COVID-19, so the person who gave it to him could be out and about in the community.

At this stage it is not known if there will be further restrictions but more will be known in the next 24-36 hours.

Be safe, get tested, be patient

Health Minister and State Member for Redcliffe Yvette D’Ath is echoing the call for people to maintain social distancing, good hand hygiene and checking in to venues.

“We will also be ensuring we have adequate testing clinic capacity for the next few days – across Brisbane City Council and Moreton Bay Regional Council we will make sure we can (if need be) expand our testing capacity quickly,” she says.

“The fever clinics in those areas will be open over the weekend, so I remind people they can go out and get tested if they’re not feeling well over the weekend.”

She is urging people to be patient if there are lines at these clinics but says staff will be doing their best to get people through those testing clinics as quickly as possible.

Here's a list of places you can get tested

The new case is one of seven in the past 24 hours – six others are in hotel quarantine which were acquired overseas. There are 69 active cases in Queensland, 7584 tests have been carried out in past 24 hours and more than 53,000 vaccines administered across the state.

Further information will be provided throughout the day.

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