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Schools and businesses will be shuttered city-wide after Queensland recorded 10 new cases of COVID-19 overnight.
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Brisbane to enter 3-day lockdown
29 March 2021
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Brisbane will go into lockdown from 5pm on Monday after 10 new cases of COVID-19 were announced overnight. Of the 10 cases, six were acquired from overseas travellers while four were locally acquired.
“What this means for greater Brisbane is that we will have to go into a three-day lockdown,” said Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk. “This is the UK strain. It is highly infectious. Now we need to do this now to avoid a longer lockdown.”
The lockdown will apply to greater Brisbane, including the local government areas of Logan, Moreton Bay, Ipswich and Redlands, and will see schools and businesses across the region closed.
Brisbane residents will only be permitted to leave their homes to exercise, shop for essentials, for healthcare, and for any work that can’t be done from home. Restrictions will be reviewed on Wednesday evening.
“That will mean that our schools will close from tomorrow and, as I said, we need to do this,” Ms Palaszczuk said. “This will also enable our health authorities to get on top of the contact tracing.”
Under the new measures, masks will now be compulsory state-wide, after it was found that one of the 10 cases travelled to Gladstone. Private gatherings hosted at home will also be limited to 30 people.
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Victoria Health on Monday morning announced that three close contacts of the Queensland cluster have been forced to isolate in Victorian hotel quarantine, but have each tested negative so far.
Brisbane’s snap lockdown comes just 24 hours after JobKeeper’s expiry, which in its final week supported around 1 million jobs. Treasury secretary Steven Kennedy last week said the end of JobKeeper could mass trigger unemployment for up to 150,000 Australians.
Lockdown restrictions in Brisbane are at this stage expected to lift on 1 April, the day the federal government is set to roll out its tourism support package which would entitle Australians to discounted flights to select locations around the country.
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