COVID-19 going undetected in Queensland-NSW border zone sewage testing due to high number of septic tanks

Thousands of residents in the New South Wales border zone are not being monitored for COVID-19 infections through wastewater testing due to their use of domestic sewage treatment plants, the ABC has confirmed.

Important points:

• Residents of the town of Lismore in the far north of NSW have been removed from the Queensland Boundary Bubble
• Lismore Mayor Vanessa Ekins says COVID-19 was not detected in wastewater tests because many residents use septic tanks
• The area is closed again

Queensland authorities rely on the highly sensitive COVID-19 fragment tests of municipal sewage systems in border areas to provide early warning of outbreaks and establish border restrictions.

On Wednesday, a person tested positive in the NSW border town of Lismore who had consistently tested negative for three local sewers for the past few weeks.

The positive case caused Queensland to remove Lismore from the border bubble and reintroduce the border zone restrictions with the local government area (LGA).

Find out about the most important COVID-19 news from September 16 with a look back on our blog Lismore residents were expelled from Queensland at 6:00 p.m. yesterday. (

Thomas Mackenzie-Forbes

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Last night at 6:00 p.m., Lismore residents were officially banned from Queensland.

At the same time, the parish of Lismore was closed in response to the positive case.

Septic tanks mean no virus will be detected

Lismore City Council Mayor Vanessa Ekins said yesterday that sewage detection has likely failed because the number of residents is not connected to the city’s sewage system.

Lismore Mayor Vanessa Ekins says much of the Northern Rivers use septic tanks. (

Bruce MacKenzie: ABC North Coast.

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Ms. Ekins said it was estimated that a quarter of the 40,000+ residents in Lismore LGA lived in households connected to septic systems.

Queensland COVID-19 snapshot

In the last 24 hours:

• Locally Acquired Cases: 1
• Other sources: 2
• Exams: 16,954

Introducing the Vaccine in Queensland (Percentage Eligible):

• First dose: 57.63 percent
• Second dose: 39.35 percent

Updated information from Queensland Health.

“Much of the Northern Rivers region is in rural areas with septic tanks so they’re not connected to the grid,” she said.

She said the positive case was believed a student who attended a school in Lismore.

The school service communities also have a very high percentage of septic systems, she said.

Ms. Ekins said the tests in the south and east of Lismore, as well as in the Nimbin sewer systems, had all been negative for the past few weeks.

COVID-19 fragment tests of wastewater are considered very accurate and can detect one COVID-19 positive person out of 10,000 people when sampling.

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But the ABC revealed last month that the tests were sporadic in some border regions, with some samples only being collected once a week, while the results of the tests took more than two days to be transported by road to a special laboratory in Sydney.

Queensland Prime Minister Annastacia Palaszczuk took the opportunity yesterday to re-emphasize the importance of vaccination.

“These are our neighbors. The only way to protect us from a major outbreak is to get vaccinated,” she said.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to search, up and down arrows to volume.RegardDuration: 29 minutes 27 seconds29m Outbreak: How Australia lost control of the Delta variant

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