Suburbs on alert over infected truckie

The warning comes after the Queensland government announced the mask mandate would be extended to the Gold Coast after one new locally-acquired case was recorded overnight.The new case, a man in his 50s, was a close contact of a case at an aviation training facility.Another case, who lives in the Gold Coast suburb of Gaven, tested positive in NSW.Chief health officer Dr Jeannette Young said the man was a truck driver who “regularly moved” between the Gold Coast and Sydney and “stopped along the way at a lot of communities”.She said the suburbs of Mermaid Waters, Merrimac, Palm Beach, Nerang, Surfers Paradise, Miami Beach and Currumbin had been visited by the man while he was infectious.“Anyone in the Gold Coast today – absolutely anyone with the most slightest of symptoms – please come and get tested,” Dr Young said.“Because we now have two people who live in the Gold Coast who’ve been out in the Gold Coast while infectious.”Exposure sites are expected to be listed by contact tracers later today.Dr Young said both new cases had the Delta variant but neither of them had links with any case in Queensland.“They’ve clustered with cases in NSW and, indeed, with the United States,” she said.“That fits with that aviation worker who works in that facility that we know international pilots use.”