Queensland’s Chief Health Officer, Dr Jeannette Young, said untraceable cases of COVID-19 in Cairns had already led to expanded community testing but it was prudent for staff to be screened with a lower threshold than normal.

After a day of no increase in cases, another six confirmed diagnoses overnight took the revised Queensland COVID-19 tally to 1024 as of Tuesday morning, with 21 in hospital. More than 83,000 tests have been conducted.

Young said a laboratory technician from Brisbane travelled to Cairns a month ago and had since been diagnosed with COVID-19. That appeared to be the source of infection for a Cairns laboratory worker who tested positive last week.

“Overnight, I received the serology results for three other people who had been in that lab who had been infected, had the infection, and have recovered,” Young said, referring to an additional type of testing that only started in Queensland on Monday.

“But it’s clear they got it from the initial person and therefore this latest person got it through that process.”

Young has urged anyone in Cairns with potential COVID-19 symptoms to seek health advice immediately, particularly as there had already been “little clusters” in the community. She noted that the expanded testing had not uncovered any wider problem.

Hospital staff are being screened due to the potential for laboratory workers to have inadvertently infected others. There is a risk that patients and visitors might also have been infected.

“It’s a cluster that’s occurred so we need to get on top of it,” Young said.

The clampdown in Cairns comes as National Cabinet today discusses whether, and when, to resume elective surgery and some other medical procedures, now that the anticipated influx of COVID-19 cases has at the very least been delayed.

A prerequisite to admitting non-urgent patients again is satisfying clinician concerns that staff might be put at greater risk. Governments are seeking to demonstrate that hospitals have sufficient supplies of personal protective equipment, however National Cabinet is seeking a uniform approach to what might be a local problem.

The Australian Health Protection Principal Committee has been meeting regularly to resolve the issue and professional groups have also been involved.

Queensland Health Minister Steven Miles today said the state’s Hospital and Health Service regions were planning for the resumption of services.

“It will vary depending on the capability of each HHS as well as what restrictions remain in place at a national level based on decisions of the National Cabinet,” Miles said.

“Part of our plan will be to ramp up elective surgery both in public and private hospitals, based on their capability. That varies substantially region to region and so each of our (HHS regions) is doing that planning work now and would hope to have at least some of it in place by next week.”

Queensland’s Labor Caucus will meet virtually this afternoon, ahead of a pared-back resumption of State Parliament tomorrow to act on urgent business. With the Speaker and Deputy Speaker unwilling to travel due to COVID-19 restrictions, Palaszczuk today insisted the government was consulting on plans for virtual sittings and would follow Canberra’s lead in deciding whether a full parliamentary session was possible in May.

“We want our parliament, our democracy, to work,” Palaszczuk said, reiterating that the National Cabinet arrangements were working well.

With ongoing concerns over temporary schooling arrangements and the extent of the economic downturn, Palaszczuk insisted her government and others were taking the issues seriously and acting on the best available advice.

“Queenslanders are doing a tremendous job (at social distancing) but all you need is one dinner party, one birthday party and it can all be just blown out of proportion,” the Premier said.

Miles said Queensland had suppressed the spread of the virus to the point where there were about 25 new cases each week compared to “a period there where we were consistently seeing twice that number a day”.

However, the Minister said authorities continued to strive for zero new cases. The three cases derived from serology results have not been added to the tally of 1024.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison is due to give an update on National Cabinet deliberations this afternoon.