Three more Australian casinos have been forced to suspend operations from Tuesday evening after the Queensland government announced a three-day lockdown for 11 local government areas.
The short “circuit breaker” lockdown, designed to provide contact tracers time to track down anyone who has been potentially exposed to the virus before they can transmit to others, comes after two new cases of COVID-19 were detected in the community, taking the total number of new cases in the past week to 12.
The 11 effected areas include Brisbane City Council, Gold Coast City Council and Townsville City Council, home to Treasury Brisbane, The Star Gold Coast and The Ville Resort-casino respectively.
All three will suspend operations for three days from today, with the closure of Treasury and The Star Gold Coast meaning all three of Star Entertainment Group’s properties have now shut their doors after The Star Sydney suspended operations for two weeks from last Friday.
Star said it would continue to pay its employees during the closure period.
Queensland is now the fourth Australian state with lockdown measures currently in place after NSW announced Saturday a two-week lockdown for Greater Sydney, Western Australia a three-day lockdown for the Perth and Peel regions from midnight Monday and the Northern Territory a lockdown for Darwin until 2 July.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said Queensland’s lockdown was necessary to tackle emerging COVID-19 community transmission in Queensland.
“With the new Delta strain now in the Queensland community, we can’t afford to take any chances,” the Premier said.
“This highly infectious strain means that a three-day lockdown in South East Queensland, Townsville and Palm Island is our only choice.
“I’m asking all Queenslanders and all visitors to these affected areas to abide by the lockdown – this is absolutely vital to keep us all safe.”
There were 23 cases of locally acquired COVID-19 Australia-wide on Tuesday, of which 19 were in Sydney.
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