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Queensland shuts border to Vic hotspot visitors

Queensland's border controls for fully vaccinated travellers from interstate hotspots will ease within hours.

Queensland's border controls for fully vaccinated travellers from interstate hotspots will ease within hours. Photo: AAP

Queensland will effectively close its border to travellers who have been in Melbourne’s coronavirus risk zones from 1am on Saturday.

Acting Premier Steven Miles said Melbourne had not been declared a hotspot, but travellers would have to formally declare they had not visited virus risk zones in the Victorian capital before being allowed to enter the Sunshine State.

“People coming from Victoria will need to make a border declaration that will allow us to check whether they’ve been in any of the locations that have been identified by the Victorian contact tracers, whether they are required to get tested, and to notify them if that is the case and require that they isolate,” he said on Thursday.

The virus cluster at a Melbourne quarantine hotel that is causing the most recent concern grew to 10 on Thursday.

They include a family of three that stayed in the hotel, three hotel workers two former travellers who had completed their COVID quarantine. Two cases confirmed on Thursday afternoon are household contacts of people who have earlier tested positive.

Queensland’s acting chief health officer, Sonya Bennett, said anyone who had been to coronavirus risk areas in Melbourne would not be allowed to enter the state.

“They won’t be allowed to come in … because technically they should be in quarantine in Victoria so we’re sort of helping our colleagues as well as protecting ourselves,” she said.

“We don’t anticipate that anyone who has been in those locations of interest to travel to Queensland but it’s just an added assurance.”

Police won’t set up road border checkpoints but any visitors caught driving or flying in without a formal declaration or with a false declaration could be fined up to $4000.

-with AAP

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