Sydney Braces for Potential Spread of Virus From Queensland

COVID-19 testing is carried out at the Summer Hill testing clinic in Sydney, Australia on Dec. 31, 2020. Brook Mitchell/Getty Images

New South Wales (NSW) is on high alert for the spread of the contagious UK strain of COVID-19 from Brisbane, where a hotel cleaner caught the mutated virus.

NSW is racing to trace the source of a mystery coronavirus case in Sydney’s northern beaches as Australia faces an anxious wait to see if a highly contagious strain of COVID-19 has spread from Brisbane.