CHO Dr John Gerrard says high vax rates mean QLD will stay safe despite omicron ‘curveball’

The new chief health officer has revealed the Omicron variant has thrown a ‘curveball’ at Queensland’s health response as he outlines how the state will handle up to thousands of daily cases.

The state’s new chief health officer has revealed Omicron has been a “curveball” but higher-than-expected vaccination rates meant Queenslanders would be protected, as he predicts how the coming weeks and months will unfold for the state.

On his first day in the role, Dr John Gerrard said “no one” expected the state to reach 80 per cent so quickly.

“I thought we would be hard pushed to get to 70 per cent,” he said.

He said previous predictions from the Doherty Institute-led modelling had never been based on a 90 per cent double dosed population, but was confident the vaccination would protect Queenslanders once the virus spreads in the community.

The CHO said the Omicron variant was a “slight spanner in the works” because health authorities did not know where it would sit in the Doherty modelling due to lack of research and cases.

New chief health officer Dr John Gerrard, Brisbane. Picture: Liam Kidston

Health authorities believe the most important information they need about Omicron was from real people and that would take between six to eight weeks to collect through laboratory and human studies which also tested the effectiveness of vaccines.

“It will take a while to get meaningful human information in terms of severity and protection from vaccine,” he said.

He also revealed there are “some anecdotal suggestions” Omicron is a slightly less severe variant.

“There is no signal that it is worse, he said.

He said a third dose of the vaccine - commonly known as a booster - is ‘really important’ in developing strong immunity against Omicron and all of Covid.

“What we are seeing is that within the first five months of being vaccinated there is good neutralisation of the virus,” he said.

“But that wains after five months.”

The high rates of vaccination, however, meant the majority of Queenslanders “won’t get very sick at all” once cases peak in the cooler months.

Dr Gerrard said the original Doherty modelling suggested now that the borders had opened, there would be a lag of several weeks to months before Covid cases surged but urged vaccinated people not to worry.

There were emotional scenes at Brisbane Airport on Monday as families and friends were reunited after months of separation. Picture: Brad Fleet

Dr Gerrard assumed the general peak would be as it starts to get cooler in three to four months and we could see hundreds or thousands of daily cases as ‘spotfires’ of outbreaks cropped up around the state.

“I think we can expect hundreds of extra spotfires and they will transmit to others, so I think we will see more than hundreds quite possibly in the next few months,” he said.

He reminded Queenslanders that vaccinated people ‘don’t get very sick at all’.

He said there would be a new plan as Queensland goes forward with the pandemic.

“We will be focusing less and less on the individual cases and more and more on the trends and looking to see if we are getting exponential increases in numbers in the community or in the hospital,” he said.

The vast majority of people with Covid-19 in the future will be managed at home.

“We have systems set up to start managing patients at home.”