Male ‘Entertainer’ Who Performed At Byron Bay Hens Party Linked To Second QLD Covid-19 Outbreak

Queensland has recorded eight new cases of community transmitted coronavirus overnight and identified a second cluster.

State authorities say six of those cases are from known infections and the other two are under investigation. There were also two overseas-acquired cases, taking the total increase since yesterday’s update to 10 cases.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said they are now dealing with two separate clusters as well, which is a concerning development.

A doctor from the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane is believed to have sparked the first cluster three weeks ago when they treated a confirmed case of Covid-19.

A nurse from the same hospital is understood to have travelled to Byron Bay with her sister to attend a hens party. Authorities say a ‘male entertainer’ at the party has since tested positive for coronavirus.

Five cases have since been linked to that second cluster.

Credit: BigTo (Creative Commons)

Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young said during a press conference: “One of the positive cases in that second cluster attended the hen’s party as an entertainer.

“And he came back and he lives in the Gold Coast and he works as a tradie, and he did go to an aged care facility in the Gold Coast.”

Thankfully, everyone at the aged care facility had already been vaccinated against the pandemic.

“We’re working with the Commonwealth to respond to that aged care facility,” she said. “The team down at the Gold Coast are organising to go to the facility today and vaccinate the staff of that facility.”

Health authorities are still trying to work out the exact chain of infection, however Dr Young believes they have a pretty good map of the situation.

“The nurse worked at the PA Hospital on March 18 in the Covid ward. We now have the genome sequence result back…She has exactly the same genome to a gentleman who arrived and was treated in the PA Hospital and was tested on March 22,” she said.

“She did do a shift on the night of March 23. My hypothesis…she has acquired the infection when at work…but I don’t know whether she got it directly from that patient, because she wasn’t working with Covid cases that night…or whether she’s got it from someone else in the hospital.

“That all has to be worked through.”

Both clusters have the more transmissible UK strain of the coronavirus, however it’s been insisted that they are ‘very, very different’ from one another.

Dr Young is concerned that the people who have tested positive so far were out in the community before they realised they were infectious.

Authorities are hoping the next few days will determine how bad this new outbreak will be.