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Travel disrupted by lockdowns in Victoria and across the Tasman

Queensland Health is enforcing strict quarantine rules on anyone arriving from COVID-19 hotspots by car or plane.

Feb 15, 2021, updated Feb 15, 2021
Lockdowns and border restrictions have again disrupted travel in Australia. (Photo: Jeremy Piper/AAP PHOTOS)

Lockdowns and border restrictions have again disrupted travel in Australia. (Photo: Jeremy Piper/AAP PHOTOS)

The lockdowns and border restrictions are undermining efforts to bring some stability to daily life ahead of vaccine rollouts providing further community protection.

While Queensland and NSW recorded no new cases of community transmission, Victoria continues to grapple with an outbreak that has seen the state plunged into a “snap lockdown”.

The cluster stemming from the Melbourne Airport Holiday Inn outbreak now numbers 17 people, with the involvement of a travel hub prompting contact tracing across Australia.

Queensland Health continues to contact, quarantine and test anyone who might be at risk of bringing COVID-19 into the state. Some 1,500 people were identified as being at an exposure site at Melbourne airport, and all but 50 have since been contacted.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said authorities would continue to do whatever was needed to keep Queenslanders safe.

“Queenslanders, please continue to go and get tested, especially if you are feeling sick,” Palaszczuk said today.

In Melbourne, health authorities remain on high alert, and today locked down three psychiatric wards and ordered more than 100 staff into quarantine after a worker potentially tested positive to COVID-19.

The only confirmed new community case was the mother of a three-year-old child linked to the growing Holiday Inn outbreak. Another case was detected in hotel quarantine.

The three-year-old and a woman from another family were confirmed to have acquired the virus yesterday after attending a private function venue in Coburg in Melbourne’s north on February 6.

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Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said it was too early to say whether the lockdown would end at midnight on Wednesday as planned.

Late on Sunday night, Australia halted quarantine-free travel for New Zealanders after three COVID-19 cases were recorded in Auckland.

The trans-Tasman bubble was set up so people could fly from New Zealand to Australia without needing to spend 14 days in a hotel.

However, Australia’s expert medical panel has decided to require hotel quarantine, at least for the next three days while the situation is reassessed.

Auckland went into alert level three restrictions from 11:59pm local time on Sunday, with the rest of New Zealand at alert level two.

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