Queensland authorities have advised residents not to flout household gathering restrictions after it was revealed three of four new COVID-19 cases recorded in the state overnight all resided in the same home.
All four are close contacts of a known case and are related to an outbreak at the Queensland Corrections Services (QCS) academy at Wacol, in Brisbane’s southwest, where a senior trainer was diagnosed with the virus on Thursday.
Three cases reside in the same Forest Lake household as two people who tested positive on Friday, while one other is from Collingwood Park.
“It’s so important that household gatherings can not be more than ten people,” Chief Health Officer Dr Jeannette Young said.
“We know that at this stage of an outbreak, it’s the household transmission and transmission from one household to another that is the key trigger for increased cases.”
Young said authorities were tracking down contacts of the three active cases and where they work or go to school or childcare.
The fourth case is a student at Staines Memorial College in Redbank Plains who was in close contact with a positive case at a gathering.
“They attend that school and that school has already alerted other students and families about that case,” Young said.
Authorities have also managed to identify one link between the Queensland Corrections Services academy and the nearby Brisbane Youth Detention Centre.
One case, who is a close contact of a worker at the detention centre, is a friend of one of the partners of one of the workers at the academy – a link Young described as “tenuous”.
Dr Young believes more connections between the two facilities will emerge as contact tracing continues.
The state has recorded a total of 1121 infections to date, of which 28 are active.
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