Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young received a 1.35am notification that the mother and daughter in Brisbane’s eastern suburbs had tested positive. The variant is not yet known.

Young said the women were “totally unknown cases” not yet linked to any existing clusters or incidents. That meant that while Townsville and other south-east Queensland council areas could emerge from lockdown at 6pm, Brisbane and Moreton would remain in lockdown until Saturday night at the earliest.

Beach weekends will only be possible for those who haven’t been in Brisbane or Moreton – people who work there, for example, will remained locked down regardless of where they live – and the mask mandate will remain.

The women had been active in West End, South Brisbane and the CBD, including various shops, a market and the Greek Orthodox Community Centre. When they developed symptoms, they went for testing, despite not having any suspected links to other cases.

Contact-tracers have been interviewing the pair since early this morning and Queensland Health will update its list of exposure sites. Young said if people had been using QR codes the risk of further infections could be minimised.

The mother and daughter were among five new cases in Queensland, two of which were in hotel quarantine. The other community-acquired case was the baggage handler partner of the Qatar Airways check-in worker confirmed yesterday. Testing has revealed he actually infected her, having probably acquired the virus from airline crews, however their form of Delta variant has not been seen in Australia and is believed to be circulating in India.

The couple, from Griffin, have recovered, meaning the risk of further transmission is low.

The unvaccinated Prince Charles Hospital receptionist, who sparked the lockdown after being infectious in the community for 10 days, has so far only infected her brother.

The number of infected fly-in, fly-out miners in Queensland with COVID-19 remains at two, and infected flight crew have not been shown to have passed on the virus to anyone else.

The Portuguese restaurant cluster has not spread any further, however one of those infected is now in intensive care.

Young said widespread compliance with the lockdown – and almost 27,000 tests yesterday – gave her confidence that COVID-19 was not circulating in the community undetected.

“With that amount of testing, I can be reasonably confident that we’re unlikely to have a significant chain of transmission going on,” Young said.

Queensland now has 46 active cases, whereas NSW has 172, including another three people in intensive care.

Greater Sydney remains in lockdown after another 31 new community-acquired cases were reported this morning, 13 of whom were active in the community for all or part of their infectious period.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said authorities expected “an increase in numbers over the next few days, then hopefully early next week we should see the impact of the lockdown really turning and having a positive impact”.

Lockdowns and restrictions across Australia have added to the number of travellers having to enter hotel quarantine in Queensland. That is despite recent breaches of hotel quarantine, and concerns of people with different risk profiles being housed in close proximity.