Queensland recorded 14 new positive tests on Monday, taking the state’s cumulative total to 921. Of those, there are 32 cases in which health authorities are unsure about where the people acquired the disease, meaning they likely caught it going about their daily life, rather than from overseas or from someone who had been overseas. It comes as the state’s death toll from the pandemic hits five, with a 78-year-old man dying in a Brisbane hospital at the weekend. Queensland Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young has maintained up until now that the current testing regime was adequate - people were tested if they had returned from overseas in the past two weeks, been in close contact with a confirmed case, worked in vulnerable settings such as healthcare or lived in a remote Indigenous community. Dr Young said she ordered for testing to be expanded to make sure the 32 cases of unknown origin were not the tip of a much larger cohort.

"Therefore, I'm going to be asking healthcare workers to increase the people they are testing, even if they don't have any travel history,” she said. "And I've asked for that to be done in the Gold Coast, in Brisbane and in Cairns, because that's where we've seen those cases." That will mean when people present to their GP or to a fever clinic, they will be tested for COVID-19 if they have symptoms. "So we'll be doing that additional testing to just get a picture of whether we think that there is any community spread happening through one of our communities," Dr Young said.

"This is pre-emptive ahead of any local transmission, so I don't [expect to] see a big increase in numbers at all." The family of the man who died at the weekend has hit out at media reports that he had “underlying conditions” which exacerbated his case of COVID-19. The disease appears to affect older people significantly worse than younger people, with people older than 65 at particular risk. Queensland Health did not comment on the specific case, but a spokesman clarified that a range of conditions, including asthma and high blood pressure, could be considered an “underlying condition”.

Of the 921 positive cases, Dr Young confirmed on Monday that 173 had made a full recovery. Of the 748 remaining cases, 43 are in hospital, 12 in intensive care, and of those, 10 are on ventilators. Restrictions around Queensland beaches will tighten after another weekend when crowds flocked to popular areas. Three Gold Coast beaches - The Spit, Surfers Paradise, and Coolangatta will be closed from Tuesday, with Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk warning more would be closed if people didn’t stay away over the Easter break. “We want people to stay in their suburbs. What we don’t want to see is mass movements of people to other parts of our state,” she said.

“People are out walking in their local communities, which is wonderful, but it’s not the time to pack up and take your family to the beach for a holiday.” The RNA on Monday announced it would not hold the Ekka this year, after earlier saying it would wait until June to make a final decision. RNA chief executive Brendan Christou said it was impossible for the Brisbane event to continue as planned due to the COVID-19 pandemic. "From an RNA perspective, the health and wellbeing of the people of Queensland come before the Ekka and with the social distancing requirements, as well as the announcement from the Premier last week that we will be a standby hospital, it is impossible for the Ekka to continue in 2020," he said. It’s just the third time in the event’s 143-year history that the show has been cancelled, the others being the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1919, and once during WWII.

Loading Meanwhile, free hotel rooms will soon be offered to Queensland health workers who do not want to put their families at an increased risk of contracting the coronavirus. The state government has earmarked $17.5 million for public health workers who don't feel safe going home, Health Minister Steven Miles said. "It's sending a message to our health workers that no matter what, we have their back." And 18,000 people have signed up for the government’s “care army” to look after elderly people who do not have anyone to do things for them otherwise.