A scout camp on the Sunshine Coast will close early after a suspected gastro outbreak resulted in more than 20 patients being taken to hospital.

The source of the outbreak is unknown and the local health service is waiting for test results to help determine what happened.

“In order to try to limit the spread of the illness, we thought it would be best to shut the activities down and then work closely with camp organisers to safely get the children to their homes,” Sunshine Coast Hospital and Health Service’s Greg Bennet said on Wednesday.

The main reason children were transported off site was to prevent further spread throughout the camp of more than 600 attendees. Some of those take to hospital were reported as young as eight.

“When you have a lot of young children in one place it’s difficult to keep everybody separated,” Mr Bennet said.

Several patients have since been discharged and all were tested for COVID-19 with no positive results returned.

A team of clinicians and environmental health officers were earlier dispatched to the Beerwah campsite and the Queensland Ambulance Service confirmed it transported several patients in a stable condition from an “organised camp” from about 9pm on Tuesday.

-with AAP