In welcoming news, Brisbane lifted stay-at-home orders Monday, after mass testing and tracing across Australia’s third-largest city found no new coronavirus cases despite fears over the contagious UK strain entering the community.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the lockdown would be lifted at 6 p.m. local time Monday after tens of thousands of tests detected zero cases of transmission.

More than two million people were ordered into a snap lockdown Friday after a cleaner at a quarantine hotel contracted the new variant of COVID-19 from a returned traveller.

Palaszczuk defended the measures as “definitely not an over-reaction.”

“We wanted to make sure we acted quickly, we acted strongly, we acted decisively and that is exactly what we did,” she said.

However, it will remain compulsory to wear masks indoors and on public transport until January 22, while restaurants and pubs will be subject to fresh restrictions on patron numbers.

Australia’s first recorded case of the UK strain in the community has also prompted authorities to slash international arrival numbers and tighten quarantine arrangements.

Until the lockdown, Brisbane was among several Australian cities enjoying a return to relative normality due to the country’s success in suppressing the virus.

The UK strain is among several emerging variants around the world believed to be way more infectious than those which have spread previously.

Australia has recorded almost 28,600 COVID-19 cases and 909 deaths linked to the virus, in a population of about 25 million.