1m cases: ‘Real number’ of Covid infected Queenslanders revealed

Queensland’s chief health officer has revealed just how many locals have likely already been infected with the virus, as he provides more detail on how close we are to the peak of the current wave.

One million Queenslanders have likely already been infected with Covid, and those who continue to refuse vaccination risk their lives to a virus that will “be with us forever”, the state’s top doctor says.

chief health officer Dr John Gerrard predicted the Covid peak would be reached on the Gold Coast in the coming week as he warned unvaccinated Queenslanders who thought they could ride out the wave and then live Covid-free were dead wrong.

Dr Gerrard revealed the average age of an unvaccinated person hospitalised with the virus was just 39 – 20 years younger than those who were triple vaccinated.

He said they were “putting their lives at risk” every day.

“It is a very bad idea not to be vaccinated,” he said.

He said those people would either need to get vaccinated, or would get infected.

“The virus is not going to go away,” he said.

“It’s going to be with us forever so you won’t be able to hide from this virus.”

Chief health officer Dr John Gerrard. Picture: Liam Kidston

The message came as Queensland recorded 15,050 new cases, 884 people in hospital, 52 in intensive care and 10 deaths in the previous 24 hours.

The deaths included a woman in her 40, another person in their 50s, six in their 80s and two in their 90s.

He said Queensland’s peak was still about two weeks away, although Gold Coast would peak first in about 7 days, followed by Brisbane, Cairns and then other regional centres.

“I would remind everyone that we are talking about the peak, the peak is not the end, the peak is the high point of transmission,” he said.

He said he would not consider easing vaccine requirements to enter certain places for “some time”, until the pandemic was “under control”, nor consider phasing out the check-in app.

Queenslanders could expect another rise in transmission when school returns, which Dr Gerrard said cemented the wisdom of the decision to push back the return-to-school date until after this first peak.

And QH was planning for another “conceivable” wave in Winter that may or may not eventuate.

Dr Gerrard said Queensland had officially recorded 250,000 cases since borders reopened, but the “real number” would be “substantially greater”.

“It’s a very large number, it’s almost certainly greater than a million,” he said.

“We don’t know the true number because not everybody’s getting tested.”

Meanwhile, Dr Gerrard apologised to the mother of a newborn baby that was taken from her at Caboolture Hospital until after the results of a PCR test, despite her having no symptoms.

“I’m very sorry if this lady had a bad experience in one of our hospitals,” he said.

“We do have a lot of mothers with Covid or with suspected Covid being managed very successfully in our hospitals and our policy is very solidly that the baby stays with the mother.”

He said there had been a “clarification” of policies with maternity wards around the state following The Courier-Mail’s reporting of Aleasha Pique’s story and other refusals to allow partners to be with Covid-positive mothers even if they were already considered close

contacts.