Australia increases isolation time in response to UK variant
Health authorities in Australia have increased the amount of time overseas arrivals must spend in hotel quarantine in case the highly-transmissible UK variant of Covid-19 makes people infectious for longer. Over the weekend, two people in Queensland and New South Wales tested positive for the mutant variant after they'd been released from quarantine. Brisbane also went into three days of lockdown when a quarantine hotel worker tested positive for the more contagious strain. RNZ reporter Matthew Theunissen discussed the developments with Catherine Bennett, the chair of epidemiology at Deakin University.