Steven Miles on Wednesday said authorities were still seeing people leave their home to shop or browse for non-essential items.While there is an exemption to allow people to leave the home to buy essential goods, like groceries and medication, he reminded Brisbanites that did not mean they could leave for “discretionary items”. “It has to be essential and the onus is on the individual to have a reason to leave their home, not on retailers or businesses,” Mr Miles said. “Now is not the time to buy outdoor furniture. There will be time before summer to get sun lounges.”He said police were checking on people who left their homes with “RBT-style” interceptions to confirm if they were leaving for the right reasons. “We just urge everyone … for five more days to do the right thing and next week you can buy all the sun lounges that you need.”Greater Brisbane was thrown into a lockdown at 4pm on Saturday which was due to lift on Tuesday but was extended to Sunday. It comes as the state recorded 17 new locally acquired cases on Wednesday; 16 linked to the Indooroopilly cluster and one in Cairns that is not linked. Chief health officer Jeannette Young also asked everyone in the 11 local government areas under lockdown restrictions to rethink if they needed to leave their front door. She asked everyone to stay home because it was people that moved the virus around. “Do you really need that furniture — that I know you can go and click and collect? … Going into the store still means you’re putting someone else at risk. “So, please, everyone, just think what you could do to just stay at home for the next few days until Sunday because it would be really good if we could lift it (the lockdown). “That’s a big challenge when I look at other states and how long it’s taken before they could lift their restrictions.“If we don‘t do something really, really, really special in Queensland, we’ll be extending the lockdown.”Dr Young said there were no issues with people going to Bunnings to get pot plants and gardening goods in last year’s lockdown, but that was because it was a different Covid-19 variant.“We just need to ramp it up. This is Delta. It’s so much more contagious.”
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