The Queensland government has announced that it will quarantine all children who attended the Australian International Islamic College at Carrara on the Gold Coast after two students travelled to Melbourne with their family.
The family of five, including two adults and three young kids under 10, travelled by “back roads” to get back into Queensland from Melbourne in the southern state of Victoria, Queensland Health Minister Yvette D'Ath told reporters on Thursday afternoon.
On Thursday afternoon, Queensland Health confirmed the family was in hotel quarantine and had now been tested for COVID-19, with the results are expected to be available Friday.
Earlier, D'Ath said the family had not agreed to be tested but that some family members were unwell.
The health minister said authorities were being very cautious given the family have been travelling and because the children had attended school. “We need to make sure we don’t have a situation where we have transmission happening in our schools and our community,” D'Ath went on to say.
Queensland Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young said earlier that while some of the family members were displaying symptoms, she was reluctant to declare them COVID-19 symptoms until testing was done.
Authorities became aware of the unlawful road trip after two of the family’s children returned to school in Queensland and told their classmates, D'Ath said.
“Police then attended the school yesterday and the family of five is now in hotel quarantine, and we’re working with them,” Young said.
Young has requested that all students that attended the school go into quarantine until the family are tested. “If we can’t get those two children tested then that school will be in quarantine for 14 days,” she said.
“I desperately want to be able to test them,” she later said.
