The Australian city of Brisbane has started a rapid closure of three days after a cleaner in his hotel quarantine system became infected with coronavirus.
Health officials have said the cleaner has the highly contagious British variant and is afraid it could spread.
Brisbane has seen very few cases of the virus outside quarantine outside travelers since the first wave of Australia last year.
This is the first known case of this variant entering the Australian community outside the hotel quarantine.
The lockout is for five populated council areas in the capital of Queensland.
Prime Minister Annastacia Palaszczuk announced the measure on Friday morning local time, about 16 hours after the woman tested positive.
Me. Palaszczuk said the exclusion was aimed at stopping the virus as soon as possible, adding: “If you do three days now, it could prevent you from doing 30 days in the future.”
“I think everyone in Queensland … knows what we see in the UK and elsewhere around the world is a high infection rate of this particular kind,” she said.
“And we do not want to see that happen here in our great state.”
Australia has reported 28,500 coronavirus infections and 909 deaths since the pandemic began. In contrast, the U.S., which is the country hardest hit, recorded more than 21 million infections, while nearly 362,000 people died from the disease.
More about Covid in Australia:
The lockout will begin Friday at 6 p.m. in the city of Brisbane, Logan and the local government areas of Ipswich, Moreton and Redlands at 6 p.m.
Residents may only leave the house for certain reasons, such as buying essential items and seeking medical attention.
For the first time, residents in those areas will also be required to wear masks outside their homes.
Australia has encountered sporadic outbreaks over the past year, with the worst in Melbourne being locked up for almost four months.
An outbreak before Christmas in Sydney raised fresh alarm, but aggressive testing and contact detection kept the number of infections low. The city recorded four local cases on Friday.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government has promised to start vaccinations in February instead of March as planned.
Lockdown disrupts ‘almost normal’ life in Brisbane
Simon Atkinson, BBC News in Brisbane
Today at 8:00 I went to the local supermarket for bread, milk – and because it’s summer – a mango. I was almost the only customer.
When I passed the same store a few hours later, it was a different story – 50 people standing in the drizzle – lined up to enter while others emerged with bulging shopping bags. ‘Hope busier than Christmas,’ a cheerful wagon told me. “It’s off the scale”.
Despite messages from authorities that ‘do not panic’, photos on social media show that it is becoming a recurring pattern in the city.
While closures are common worldwide, the difficult and sudden home for Brisbane has put people here on the run after months of near normalcy.
But while such a quick, hard shutdown on the back of just a single case of Covid-19 would seem crazy in some parts of the world, I have not encountered too many people complaining.
And I do not think it’s just because Aussies like to follow a rule. This is the first time the British variant of the virus has been detected in the Australian community.
And no one here wants Brisbane to go through what Melbourne suffered last year. Even if it means without mangoes.