Queensland chaos – sporting world in a spin over Queensland’s COVID lockdown
The AFL has been forced to postpone three Round 20 matches scheduled to be played in Queensland this weekend due to the snap lockdown in Brisbane and south east Queensland.
Today’s matches between the Gold Coast and Melbourne at Metricon Stadium, and Essendon and Sydney at the Gabba, along with tomorrow’s game between GWS and Port Adelaide at Metricon Stadium, will have to be rescheduled.
The AFL is working through the situation to determine when those matches might be played.
Melbourne were due to land at around 11am ahead of this afternoon’s match against the Gold Coast but their flight is been diverted to Perth, where they were scheduled to go into quarantine ahead of next week’s match against West Coast, while the Swans, Essendon, and GWS were already temporarily based in Queensland.
The Brisbane Lions are expected to be able fly to Launceston today to play Hawthorn in Tasmania on Sunday as clubs entered a hook-up with AFL officials with the League considering using the pre-finals bye to complete the season.
The games in Victoria, Tasmania and Western Australia will continue as planned.
Meanwhile, a host of NRL games – including the Storm and Panthers, and Knights and Raiders at Suncorp, the Bulldogs and Titans at CBUS Stadium, and the Sharks and Sea Eagles at Redcliffe – are also off. There’s also a huge cloud hovering over Super Netball, with the whole competition based in Queensland and three games scheduled across Monday and Tuesday.
Queensland’s Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young urged everyone in the restricted areas to stay home unless it was absolutely critical.
On Friday, a 17-year-old student at Indooroopilly State High School in Brisbane’s inner west tested positive for COVID-19.
She was tested after becoming unwell on Thursday and was deemed to have been infectious in the community since Tuesday, having attended the school for two days.
Dr Young said contact tracers were working through the connections to the school, adding that the medical student had “been to a lot of venues”.
Indooroopilly State High School in Brisbane’s inner-west has been listed as a close contact exposure site after a 17-year-old student’s COVID-19 infection, so far unlinked, was reported on Friday.
Three of Queensland’s latest COVID ‘incursions’ still not linked to a source.
“She has been to a lot of venues, a lot of places, at Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, at the University of Queensland, at the Translational Research Institute [at the Princess Alexandra Hospital], and also she has a sibling who works in a hospital,” she said.
The school will remain closed for up to two weeks, with Education Minister Grace Grace saying all students and staff who were at the school on the morning of Tuesday, July 27, and all day Wednesday, July 28, must isolate at home during the fortnight.
A COVID-19 testing site was set up at the school and will operate from 8am on Saturday for staff and student contacts.
The University of Southern Queensland’s Springfield campus, west of Brisbane, also closed after three university staff attended an event at the school on Thursday.
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