A specialist team has been dispatched to the town of Blackwater, while a fever clinic will be opened at the town’s rodeo ground from 8:00 am for those who want to get tested.
However, Deputy Premier Steven Miles Miles said much is still unclear.
“We don’t know a lot more than yesterday,” he told ABC radio.
“Our immediate focus is testing as many people as we can because that’s what will allow us to find out if the virus is circulating on the ground there or whether he has acquired it some other way.”
Miner Nathan Turner, 30, was found unresponsive by his partner in their home on Tuesday afternoon, with paramedics confirming he had passed away and his diagnosis later discovered in a post-mortem test.
The results of a second test on his partner, who works at a shop in the town and displayed symptoms but returned a negative result, will be known later today.
Turner hadn’t worked since November and hadn’t left the small mining town since February.
A team of public health experts and additional contact tracing resources have been deployed from Brisbane to Blackwater in a bid to work out how Turner contracted the virus.
An aged care nurse testing positive in Rockhampton earlier this month was the first case in central Queensland, but authorities have so far ruled out any connection between the two.
Health authorities have confirmed the nurse travelled to Blackwater in the second week of May, before testing positive, but a spokesman said she did not interact with anyone there.
The nurse is suspended and under investigation after she continued working while showing symptoms.
Turner had a complicated medical history and was not tested before he died, because of the seriousness of his underlying condition.
Turner is the youngest Australian to die from the virus and his death brings the national toll to 103.
With AAP
