Businesses trying to survive on the back of online sales reacted with anger on Wednesday when the chief health officer urged consumers to reconsider online shopping and click-and-collect for anything other than essentials.

Despite the backlash from business groups and traders Jeannette Young doubled down on that advice on Thursday.

She said it was a simple fact that the risk of COVID-19 spreading in the southeast would be lower if fewer delivery drivers were on the move.

"The least amount of movement in our community that we can possibly manage, the better," Dr Young told reporters.

"That is for everything ... If it's not essential, then just delay it for a few days, and hopefully that means we might be able to get out of this on Sunday."

Dr Young expressed surprise at how effective the lockdown had been and said she was hopeful it would end as scheduled at 4pm on Sunday.

"We did not expect to be this far ahead of the virus," she said after detailing 16 new locally acquired cases, all but four of which were isolated while infectious.

Deputy Premier Steven Miles said he was also encouraged and said it was too soon to be talking about additional support for businesses if the lockdown didn't lift.

But the Opposition said the government's $260 million support package for small and medium-sized businesses hit by the lockdown was woefully inadequate even before Dr Young called for the suspension of non-essential online shopping.

"If the health advice around online shopping has changed, then so too must the compensation available to keep these businesses afloat," Opposition Leader David Crisafulli told reporters.

He wants the government to introduce a sliding scale of compensation, rather than offering all small and medium-sized businesses the same $5000 payout.

And he's calling for changes to ensure sole traders earning less than $75,000 can access help too.

The National Retail Association has said it's appalled by Dr Young's call for a boycott on non-essential online shopping.

It said retailers couldn't get a definitive answer from the government about who was and wasn't considered an essential trader, and consumers were being told to shop online one minute, and to avoid it the next.

The women behind Gold Coast small business Leina and Fleur have expressed alarm at the prospect of sales falling off a cliff, and despair about trading rules during the lockdown.

"It's real mixed messaging and we've been constantly online looking at the protocols of defining what an essential businesses is," co-owner Fleur Richardson has told AAP.

"Monthly online retail for Australia average is around $3 billion. Given that Sydney's in a substantial lockdown, if everyone was to wind things down to stop a courier driver safely delivering something to your front door it would be quite dire."

The coronavirus outbreak that's sent 11 local government areas in the southeast into lockdown now involves 79 infections, including the 16 new local cases reported on Thursday.

All cases involve the highly transmissible Delta variant and are centred on the Brisbane suburb of Indooroopilly.

Australian Associated Press