Millions of Queenslanders have been plunged into another snap lockdown amid fears a holidaying hospital worker may have spread COVID-19 throughout Brisbane and north Queensland.
The premier has expressed disbelief after learning the young woman was not vaccinated but continued to work shifts as a concierge stationed just outside Prince Charles Hospital's coronavirus ward.
The 19-year-old tested positive on Monday after she and her family left their home at Sandgate in Brisbane and flew to Townsville, visiting the city's Sunday markets, numerous dining venues, and Magnetic Island.
She was also out and about in Brisbane before heading north for the family holiday, with Brisbane airport and a Woolworths at Sandgate among the exposure venues.
Magnetic Island, nearby Palm Island, Townsville, and Queensland's entire southeast corner are now subject to a three-day lockdown from 6pm Tuesday to 6pm on Friday, when it will be reviewed.
The concierge was one of two cases of community transmission reported on Tuesday.
The second was another miner who returned to Queensland from a Northern Territory mine where the highly contagious Delta strain has been circulating.
But Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young considers him low risk because he's been isolating since very soon after returning to his home at Ipswich, west of Brisbane.
He is the second miner among a group of 170 who returned to Queensland from the mine. All are in isolation and are being closely monitored.
Dr Young is anxiously waiting on genomic sequencing that will reveal if the hospital concierge also has the Delta strain.
One of her close friends and two of her family members are also ill now and are awaiting test results. The concierge also had contact with three other hospital workers.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk promised an investigation and expressed exacerbation that unvaccinated staff continue to show up for work in high-risk environments.
"She should have been vaccinated, she was not. So the health minister will be overseeing that issue in detail," she told reporters. "I am absolutely furious about this."
The premier said a hard, fast lockdown was the only way contact tracers would have time to catch up with the virus.
She acknowledged it would cause pain in the community but did not offer any new support measures for businesses who'll lose days of trading, despite pressure from the Opposition and the Chamber of Commerce and Industry Queensland.
But she did repeat demands for the federal government to dramatically slash overseas arrivals, including returning Australians, until vaccination rates are vastly higher.
Ms Palaszczuk says more outbreaks are inevitable because the hotel quarantine system is not up to the task of containing imported variants.
The premier and Dr Young also advised Queenslanders aged under 60 to stick with the Pfizer vaccine, after the prime minister declared all Australians, no matter their age, would be able to get AstraZeneca at GP clinics under an indemnity scheme.
Queensland's partial lockdown covers residents of Brisbane, Ipswich, Logan City, Moreton Bay, Redlands, Sunshine Coast, Noosa, Somerset, Lockyer Valley, the Scenic Rim, the Gold Coast, Townsville, Magnetic Island and nearby Palm Island.
Residents in those areas will only be allowed to leave home to shop for essential items, exercise, or receive or give medical care.
Masks remain mandatory and other restrictions have also been tightened including limiting funerals to 20 people, and weddings to 10 people, including the celebrant and couple.
As cases grow elsewhere Queensland will declare Perth and Peel in Western Australia and Darwin, Palmerston and Litchfield in the Northern Territory as hotspots from 1am on Wednesday.
© AAP 2021