Greater Brisbane will enter a hard lockdown from 6pm after a cleaner at a quarantine hotel was diagnosed with the highly contagious UK variant of COVID-19.

Residents in the council areas of Brisbane, Logan, Ipswich, Moreton Bay and Redlands will be required to stay at home until 6pm Monday except for essential work, exercise, essential shopping and to access healthcare.

Masks will also be mandated for people leaving home in the Greater Brisbane area.

The cleaner is Australia’s first case of the more infectious strain of the coronavirus outside of quarantining returned overseas travellers.

Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly said the situation in Queensland was concerning.

“We do know that we’ve had cases of the UK variant in our hotel quarantine system,” he told ABC RN on Friday.

“And we do know sometimes with a very complex system which relies on humans, mistakes can happen. That apparently is the case here.”

The hotel cleaner’s infection ended almost four months of zero locally acquired cases in Queensland.