Chief health officer tells Queenslanders to ‘assume you have Covid’ if they have flu symptoms
As the state’s hospitals and paramedics come under “significant pressure” amid the Omicron spiral, the chief health officer has told Queenslanders there’s one Covid symptom that means it could be an emergency.
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Got Covid? Then please, don’t call an ambulance unless walking from room to room in your house feels like climbing a steep hill.
That’s the plea from chief health officer Dr John Gerrard as Queensland hospitals and paramedics come under “significant pressure” amid the Omicron spiral.
Dr Gerrard called for calm as the number of people in hospital with Covid surged by 10 per cent to 649, with 46 in intensive care.
“There is a good chance this is the beginning of that final surge before we reach a peak sometime in the next two weeks,” he said
“Now as we are approaching the peak, if you have flu-like symptoms, then it’s likely that you have Covid-19.”
Dr Gerrard said anyone with ‘classical’ flu symptoms such as a headache, runny nose, muscle aches, a cough and chills almost certainly had Covid.
He said they should get a PCR test or rapid antigen test to confirm but if this was proving difficult, “just assume you have Covid and isolate”.
“It’s no need to be anxious or panic; for the vast majority of people, particularly otherwise healthy vaccinated adults, you will have a mild illness similar to any respiratory infection you’ve had in the past,’’ he said.
Dr Gerrard said people should only dial Triple 0 if they became breathless walking between rooms and needed to stop to take a breath “as if you’ve climbed a steep hill”.
“Then you probably need to come to hospital,” he said.
Significant chest pain, coughing up blood or fainting would be other reasons to call an ambulance, he said, “not just having a fever”.
He said if a fever persisted after 72 hours, people should seek medical advice.
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