Australia's Queensland confirmed Tuesday eight new cases of community-transmitted coronavirus. Its capital Brisbane remains locked down.

Six of the eight are close contacts of confirmed cases, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk told a news conference Tuesday. The other two, both community transmitted, are historical cases with the source yet to be confirmed.

"The good news is that these cases are linked and we now believe that there are two distinct clusters," Palaszczuk said. "So, we have a cluster linked, of course, to that (Princess Alexandra Hospital) doctor. And we have a second cluster linked to the (hospital) nurse."

Six cases have been linked to two clusters, according to Queensland's chief health officer Dr. Jeannette Young, and two others are still being investigated. Queensland has reported 10 cases in all - including two people in hotel quarantine.

Based on genomic sequencing, all of those cases are connected and are all the U.K. variant of COVID-19. Despite the fact that they are both from the Princess Alexandra Hospital, Dr. Young said the two clusters were "unrelated."

Brisbane is in a three-day lockdown until Thursday, forcing more than 2 million residents to stay at home except for essential work, health care, grocery shopping or exercise.

The restrictions disrupted thousands of people's vacation plans. The lockdown is set to end a day before the Easter long weekend and the school term break in Australia.

Several states have closed their borders with Queensland, while others require travelers arriving from virus hot spots to self-isolate for two weeks.

Neighboring New South Wales state, Australia's most populous, is also on high alert after two of the Queensland cases, a nurse and her sister, traveled to Byron Bay, a tourist town just south of the Queensland border. They were unaware they were infectious.

Australia has contained new clusters thanks to snap lockdowns, social distancing and quick contact tracing. Since the pandemic started, it has recorded 29,300 cases and 909 deaths.