{"id":311638,"date":"2021-12-18T15:16:54","date_gmt":"2021-12-18T05:16:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/?p=311638"},"modified":"2021-12-18T16:09:01","modified_gmt":"2021-12-18T06:09:01","slug":"positive-case-linked-to-hospital","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/2021\/12\/18\/positive-case-linked-to-hospital\/","title":{"rendered":"Positive Case Linked To Hospital"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Chief Health Officer Dr John Gerrard (Photo: Qld Health)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

December 18, 2021<\/strong><\/p>\n

Thirty-one new cases of COVID-19 in Queensland were announced by the State Government on Saturday morning along with a string of new contact tracing locations.<\/p>\n

Two of the new cases were acquired overseas and detected in hotel quarantine, and five were instate travellers who were not in quarantine.<\/p>\n

Twenty-four were acquired within Queensland.<\/p>\n

One person caught the virus in the community, with no known links; eight were contacts of known cases; and 15 cases are still under investigation.<\/p>\n

There are now 109 active cases in the State, including a confirmed 12 with the Omicron variant.<\/p>\n

A public health alert has been issued for new contact tracing locations across the Gold Coast, Brisbane, Mackay and Townsville.<\/p>\n

Chief Health Officer Dr John Gerrard confirmed a positive case has been identified linked to Toowoomba Hospital.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Other cases in health care settings – either staff or visitors – include the North West Private Hospital in Brisbane; Princess Alexandra Hospital, Bluecare Homefield Aged Care facility in Mackay and at least one GP practice in Brisbane.<\/p>\n

Dr Gerrard said cases identified in healthcare settings were “inevitable” as the epidemic progressed.<\/p>\n

Darling Downs Health has confirmed the Toowoomba case is a hospital staff member who was double-vaccinated and asymptomatic while at work.<\/p>\n

Dr Gerrard said the 31 new cases announced on Saturday was effectively a 50 per cent increase on Friday.<\/strong><\/p>\n

“As expected the number of cases we see in Queensland continues to increase,” Dr Gerrard said.<\/p>\n

“In addition we know there are cases that we will not be diagnosing that are in the community.<\/p>\n

“This is what we expected. We expected that in the coming weeks we are going to see very large numbers of cases of COVID-19 in the community.”<\/p>\n

However, Dr Gerrard emphasised none of the recent cases or those in hospital were seriously unwell.<\/p>\n

He expected the Omicron strain would become dominant in Queensland over the coming weeks.<\/p>\n

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