Three new locally acquired cases of COVID-19 have emerged in Queensland, in the highly-vaccinated town of Goondiwindi.
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced the cases at her daily COVID-19 press conference on Thursday.
Two of the three cases were infectious in the community for several days.
One of the people, who wasn’t vaccinated, was linked to a known cluster based in the northern New South Wales town of Moree, and is of little concern to health authorities.
A second case, also unvaccinated, had been in the Goondiwindi community for five days while infectious but all of the person’s household and close contacts have tested negative.
The third case is a woman in her 30s who’d been infectious in the community for four days and has had received one dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
The cases arrive at Goondiwindi, the town with the highest vaccination rate in the state with 93.1 per-cent of the eligible population having received one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, while 83.5 per-cent of residents are fully vaccinated.
Premier Palaszczuk says the cases demonstrate why it is important for people to get vaccinated.
“Goondiwindi has probably one of the best vaccination rates in the state and the virus is impacting on those people, who are unvaccinated.
“This virus will hunt you out and if you are unvaccinated, you can get very, very sick.”
A testing facility will be set up outside the Goondiwindi Hospital with the positive cases to be transferred to dedicated COVID hospitals in south-east Queensland today.
Premier Palaszczuk says Goondiwindi won’t be put into lockdown because of the high vaccination rate.
“It is a message to Queenslanders right across the state, your community needs to get vaccinated.”
A list of exposure sites at Goondiwindi will be posted later on today.
As of today, 78.54 per-cent of Queenslanders have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, while 65.26 per-cent are fully vaccinated.
