Southeast Queensland, Townsville and two northern islands will begin a three-day lockdown from Tuesday 29 June at 6pm until Friday 2 July at 6pm after two new COVID-19 cases in the community.
The lockdown will begin at 6pm on Tuesday, and lift at 6pm on Friday, unless the situation worsens.
It covers residents of Brisbane, Ipswich, Logan City, Moreton Bay, Redlands, Sunshine Coast, Noosa, Somerset, Lockyer Valley, the Scenic Rim, the Gold Coast, Townsville, Magnetic Island and Palm Island.
Residents in those areas will only be allowed to leave home to shop for essential items, exercise, or receive or give medical care.
Two other cases were reported in hotel quarantine, both overseas acquired.
“I know we are in the middle of school holidays, and I know people have made plans, but we have just got to do this,” Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said of the lockdown.
“We have got to do this for three days … I don’t want it to be 30 days.”
Ms Palaszczuk also repeated calls for an immediate, dramatic cut to overseas arrivals saying they were bringing in the virus, and being left in a hotel quarantine system not set up for infection control.
The premier said a short sharp lockdown was unavoidable with four major COVID risks bubbling away in the state, and north Queensland now exposed.
Ms Palaszczuk expressed anger that there’s been another case of a frontline worker going to work without being vaccinated.
“She works as a receptionist outside the COVID ward … she should have been vaccinated but was not. I’m absolutely furious about this,” she said.
It’s not yet clear if she became infected at the hospital, or might have picked up the virus from another source. It’s also not yet known if she has the Delta variant, or possibly the Alpha variant which is also circulating in Brisbane.
