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Officially, Queensland registered a new local case of COVID-19 today, but it is believed to be a historic case and not related to the current outbreak.
However, Queensland health authorities are now investigating whether a traveler who returned to the Grand Chancellor Hotel and tested positive on the departure test on the 12th contracted the infection inside the hotel.
They had been on the same floor as the patient with the UK strain who was transferred to the Princess Alexandra, where the junior doctor is believed to have been infected.
It’s the same quarantine hotel where an outbreak in January sent all of Brisbane into lockdown.
Now urgent genome sequencing is underway as health authorities work to determine if the genome of the latest case matches that of the original case.
Meanwhile, the Grand Chancellor hotel has been returned to lockdown, with no new foreign travelers being admitted and current guests who have completed their 14-day quarantine are not released.
(Tony Moore – Brisbane Times)
There have been 5,026 tests in the last 24 hours, and Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the next 48 will be “very crucial” in containing the new outbreak.
The Palestinian Authority doctor’s three main contacts tested negative for COVID-19, but will remain in isolation for 14 days.
Testing of the doctor’s 238 community contacts is underway.
The Palestinian Authority doctor ‘did not routinely work in the quarantine room’
Health Minister Yvette D’Ath said 1,615 of the 3,862 hospital employees had received their first injection.
“We need to remind ourselves that we are only in week three of a national vaccination rollout,” said Ms. D’Ath, noting that no state or territory has completed Phase 1A inoculations of high-priority individuals.
The junior registrar is believed to have contracted the virus from one of two patients brought in from the hotel quarantine in the early hours of Wednesday, March 10.
She was not assigned to any particular ward and worked throughout the hospital.
“This particular doctor did not routinely work in the quarantine room,” Ms D’Ath said.
“They called her around 2.30 in the morning to assess a couple of quarantine arrivals from the hotel who were showing symptoms.”
Ms D’Ath also said it was “completely false” that the doctor could not have contracted the virus if he had received his first dose of the vaccine, noting that the vaccine would reduce the severity of the disease but not eliminate transmission.
