Karlie Brady

Journalist

The Queensland border will once again close to Greater Melbourne as Victoria is plunged into a five-day snap lockdown.

Queensland's Deputy Premier Steven Miles today announced that from 1:00am Saturday the Queensland border will close to 36 local government areas in Melbourne which have been declared a hotspot.

The border is set to remain closed for two weeks.

Anyone who enters Queensland and has been in the Greater Melbourne hotspots since 9 February will be directed to quarantine in government-arranged accommodation for 14 days.

Mr Miles said contract tracing is underway for 1,500 people in Queensland who had travelled through terminal four at Melbourne airport on the day that an infectious person was working there.

"That has led to a very large number contacts needing to be traced in Queensland," he said.

"Our contact tracers are racing to contact these individuals — they have all been messaged.

"We've stood up our additional contact tracing resources to ensure that they can do that.

"We need to give them time to contact those people before we have to add additional contacts to those list."

The border closure comes after Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews announced a five-day lockdown in response to the growing cluster, now at 13 cases, linked to hotel quarantine at the Holiday Inn at Melbourne airport.

A number of venues in Victoria are on alert after being visited by someone who has now tested positive to COVID-19. The Queensland government has urged anyone who has been to the venues in Greater Melbourne to get tested and quarantine for 14 days.

Anyone who has been in Greater Melbourne on or since 5 February, but hasn’t been to one of the affected venues, should come forward for testing and isolate until you receive a negative result.