Queensland declares all of Victoria a COVID hotspot

Victorians will once again be locked out of the Sunshine State with Queensland declaring the whole of Victoria as a COVID-19 hotspot.

Victoria entered a five-day lockdown at midnight on Thursday after a surge in local COVID-19 cases.

From 1:00am Saturday 17 July, anyone arriving into Queensland from Victoria will not be allowed to enter Queensland without an exemption.

“Any Queenslanders returning after that time will have to complete 14 days mandatory hotel quarantine,” Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said.

“I just think we need to make sure that we are keeping a close eye on this because what we are seeing is this Delta Sydney strain spreading to Victoria and coming up to Queensland as well.

“The clear message to Queenslanders is definitely do not go to NSW and do not go to Victoria during this period of time."

Queenslanders already in Victoria are urged to consider returning home if they can.

Greater Sydney, Central Coast, Blue Mountains, Wollongong, and Shell Harbour in NSW remain a hotspot, however, the border to regional NSW remains open with the Premer stating they are monitoring the situation very closely, with the spread so far being contained within the hotspot zones.

It comes as Queensland also recorded one new locally acquired case, the mother of the 12-year-old boy who tested positive yesterday. The boy’s father also tested positive yesterday.

Genome sequencing has confirmed the family has the Delta strain of the virus, likely acquired during their stay in hotel quarantine in Sydney after returning from overseas.

Chief Health Officer, Dr Jeanette Young said investigations into how he caught the virus is ongoing.

“The people in Sydney, the health staff there will be working through how he acquired the infection while he was in hotel quarantine down there,” Dr Young said.

“He has come up here and he had very little exposure out in the community, so we are just tracking through any contacts he had while he was in the community.

“His father had minimal exposure in the community and his mother virtually none because she went into hospital with her son when he was admitted. That’s all good.

“In total, there are 62 contacts that we have found so far and we are just working with all of those.”

Health officials are also working to find all of the possible close contacts linked with the third case announced yesterday, a female worker at Brisbane International Airport.

“We have already gone through CCTV footage and found 23 close contacts, 22 casual contacts and we expect there will be others,” Dr Young said.