A traveller who was two hours away from completing her two weeks in Australian quarantine was one of over a hundred travellers who had to restart after an outbreak was discovered at their hotel.
Leila Burate arrived back in Australia from Brazil a couple of weeks ago and went into mandatory isolation at the Hotel Grand Chancellor in Brisbane.
She told Sunrise that she was due to finish her time on Wednesday morning having tested negative for the virus five times, and had packed her bags in anticipation and she had also received a box of chocolates from the hotel as congratulations.
But just two hours before she was due to be released, Burate said she received a phone call from a health official saying she wasn't allowed to leave.
"I was supposed to check out at 10:30am and around 8:30am they contacted me and said I was going to be moved to a new hotel," she told Sunrise on Thursday.
"Shortly after someone came in and did a new COVID test and no one actually told us exactly what was happening until close to 12pm.
"They called me and said they are coming to pick me up, that they know it's hard to hear but I'm going to have to spend another 14 days in quarantine."
Burate was moved to the Westin Hotel along with 129 other guests who had to restart their stints after six people linked to the Grand Chancellor tested positive to the mutant strain of COVID-19.
She said she was distraught when she found out.
"I cried on the phone and said I didn't want to do it, but there was no option, I had to."
Maria Byrne, her partner and their two young children were also moved to another hotel quarantine facility on Thursday, she told ABC news.
"There was a letter in our breakfast bag that said we would be relocated to another hotel, so we rang the reception desk and the lady told us the entire hotel was being evacuated," Byrne said.
Several of the hotel guests were transported by ambulance to the new facility.
"It was like something from 'The Martian' movie, it was unbelievable," she said.
