Elective surgeries at a Queensland hospital have been cancelled amid a COVID-19 cluster with another health worker among two new cases recorded in the Sunshine State.
A woman in her 30s has become the fifth case linked with infected patients at Ipswich Hospital while another woman, aged in her 20s, is linked to a household of a known cases.
More than 200 hospital staff remain in COVID-19 isolation as virus clusters linked to two quarantine dodging teens continue to grow.
Director General of Queensland Health John Wakefield said the hospital staffer had already been in quarantine when she tested positive.
"She was identified as a contact of that previous case."
Emergency department staff at Ipswich Hospital were now back at work but non-urgent elective surgeries had been impacted, Dr Wakefield said.
Private hospitals will be offering elective surgery for those patients whose procedures have been cancelled.
"For every patient whose procedure has been delayed we'll work with them to decide what they want to do," he said.
Both new cases are part of the outbreaks at the Brisbane Youth Detention Centre and Queensland Corrective Services training centre.
Testing previously found it was likely the clusters were linked to three women who lied on their border declarations after returning from Victoria in July.
So far the outbreaks are connected to 85 infections with the number of active cases in Queensland at 25.
It comes as the state government prepares to roll out a controversial testing scheme at chemists.
Health Minister Steven Miles has dismissed concerns allowing pharmacies to conduct COVID-19 testing will lead to further outbreaks.
"We wouldn't be trialling anything if we didn't think it was safe," he told reporters Monday.
The point was not to promote pharmacies as testing sites but to take advantage of their position to "opportunistically" test people who come in displaying coronavirus symptoms, he said.
"These are people going into pharmacy for treatment we know are symptoms of COVID-19 and not getting tested right now."
Almost one million Queenslanders have been tested for coronavirus since the pandemic began, with more than 960,000 people being swabbed so far.
More than 6000 tests were taken overnight including 600 at a Russell Island pop-up clinic after a Moreton Bay islands resident tested positive on Saturday.
The woman, who commuted on a local ferry while infectious, is also linked to the corrective services cluster.
The detention centre outbreaks at Wacol began when a prison worker tested positive for coronavirus in August.
It led to a second cluster at the nearby Correctional Services Training Academy when a senior trainer became infected.
Some of the staff potentially exposed at the centre also worked at the Arthur Gorrie Correctional Centre.
Southeast Queensland prisons went into lockdown 10 days ago as a result, with 7000 prisoners confined to their cells.
They will remain in place until at least two weeks have passed since the first case in the cluster was recorded, Mr Miles says.
"Clearly corrections is keen to do that as quickly as they possibly can," he said.
Riots have broken out at several prisons since the lockdown began.
Australian Associated Press
