As Queensland contact tracers race to find anyone potentially exposed to the Delta COVID-19 variant, a Brisbane family has shared the highly stressful and emotional experience of being a close contact.
Key points:
- Queensland recorded three new community cases of COVID-19 today
- South-east Queensland, Townsville, Magnetic Island and Palm Island are in lockdown for three days until 6:00pm Friday 2 July
- Queensland Health is regularly updating its contact tracing exposure sites here
Eighteen months into the global COVID-19 pandemic, this is the "first real exposure" to COVID-19 for Kyla – who did not want to use her last name – and her family.
During their trip to Magnetic Island, she and her two young daughters took the same flight – VA369 from Brisbane to Townsville on June 24 – as the young woman infected with the highly contagious Delta strain.
Kyla discovered she was a close contact of the case while listening to the Queensland government's press conference at work on Tuesday morning.
"I listened to the whole thing when they started talking about Magnetic Island, and it wasn't until the flight number … that we put our masks on in our workplace and walked straight out to go get tested," she said.
"My first reaction, as soon as the flight was announced, was a huge wave of anxiety, just because as much as you know about it, you don't actually know what to do in that situation.
"You know to go get tested and isolate, but I didn't know what the next few days or two weeks look like for us.
"It was the unknown and I haven't really thought about if we contract it — I haven't thought that far ahead.
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)Scrambling for answers
Kyla tested negative, but she and her two daughters will remain in quarantine until July 8, when 14 days since the flight will have passed.
"I lodged the contact tracing form and was basically on hold with Queensland Health for about 40 minutes just to ask a few more questions," she said.
"One, whether the kids have to get tested, two, does my husband have to get tested, because he wasn't on the same flight?
After confirmation from the health department, one-year-old Lexi and three-year-old Abbie were tested today.
Alone together
Kyla's husband also went to Magnetic Island but did not attend one of the exposure sites or travel on the same flight to Townsville, and Kyla says he is not required to quarantine.
Queensland Health's guidelines state that "the other people in your house are not in quarantine. The aim is to keep them safe should you develop symptoms and COVID-19. They can continue to go about their daily lives as normal".
"There is protocol in our household, I can't prepare his food, he has to sleep in a separate bedroom, we can't share the same bathroom," Kyla said.
"We're at the time now where we're saying 'you probably just have to quarantine us because we can't do these things around our household.'
"We're in a three-bedroom, one-bathroom house, we've got two young kids … we're not allowed to mix and mingle with each other. I don't know [how] to explain to my three-and-a-half-year-old she's not allowed to touch her father for a week.
Kyla and her husband were still deciding whether it was possible for him to remain in the house or to temporarily live somewhere else and whether he should still go to work.
"It's a bit emotional for us too — this is our first real exposure to COVID and we've never had to go through it before, thankfully, but there is a lot of tough decisions for our family to make.
"My kids are very outdoor kids so trying to explain to them that they can't go to the park … is going to be very hard."
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMicWh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmFiYy5uZXQuYXUvbmV3cy8yMDIxLTA2LTMwL3FsZC1tdW0tb24tc3RyZXNzLW9mLWJlaW5nLWEtY292aWQtMTktZGVsdGEtc3RyYWluLWNsb3NlLWNvbnRhY3QvMTAwMjU1Mjk00gEoaHR0cHM6Ly9hbXAuYWJjLm5ldC5hdS9hcnRpY2xlLzEwMDI1NTI5NA?oc=5
2021-06-30 08:34:11Z
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