Covid Qld: Queensland records four new cases, no local transmission

Queensland has recorded four new cases in hotel quarantine as National Cabinet continues to weigh up the risks surrounding Australia’s reopening.

Queensland has recorded four new cases of Covid overnight but all were overseas acquired and detected in hotel quarantine.

There were no local cases.

It comes as the Doherty Institute has reiterated to National Cabinet that it will be safe to fully reopen Australia when 80 per cent of people aged 16 years and over are fully vaccinated, regardless of case numbers.

The confirmation comes as almost 300,000 Queensland teenagers will be eligible to get the Pfizer Covid-19 jab from mid-September, with school-based vaccine programs now in the works.

The Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation yesterday approved the broad use of the Pfizer vaccine in children aged 12 to 15, with authorities still working on ticking off use of the Moderna vaccine in children.

Children in the cohort will be able to book in for their first dose from September 13, just as Australia’s stock of vaccines is set to increase from October.

After a week of back and forth between the Federal Government and the states and territories over the vaccination levels required to banish lockdowns, National Cabinet was given another briefing from Doherty professor Jodie McVernon on the institute’s draft modelling scenarios.

State and territory leaders assemble via videoconference for National Cabinet yesterday. Picture: Adam Taylor

But National Cabinet was also told that some public measures such as mask wearing, contact tracing and localised moderate restrictions would be necessary at between 70 and 80 per cent of vaccination coverage.

To allay concerns by some states that health systems around the country will struggle to handle the increase in case numbers once the country moves away from the current heavy suppression and elimination models, the nation’s leaders have agreed to establish a taskforce to look at hospital preparedness.

The taskforce, to be led by Health Department Secretary Brendan Murphy, will report back to National Cabinet next week on how to make sure Australia has enough ICU beds and ventilators when coronavirus begins to circulate around the country without lockdowns.

It will also look at ways in which states can help each other to support their health systems when that day arrives.

Sources familiar with the meeting said Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews backed the Doherty modelling in his comments to the National Cabinet.

But West Australian Premier Mark McGowan, who has expressed unhappiness at the Doherty plan gave no guarantee in the meeting that he would adhere to the plan.

Speaking afterwards in Perth where he was announcing that two infected truck drivers from NSW had entered the state, Mr McGowan hedged his bets.

“If there’s thousands of cases out there and those cases have been seeded into, if you like, into a jurisdiction without Covid, then obviously the risk is much higher,” he said.

“That’s the problem that jurisdictions without Covid face – and I raised that point today – the idea that we just deliberately infect our citizens when we have no Covid when we get to 70 per cent vaccination, I just can’t do that because people will die.”

Vaccine rollout lead Lieutenant General John Frewen confirmed school-based vaccine programs were in the works, with the Federal Government to work with states and territories and directly with the private school system.

“You will see those programs taking shape over the next month or so,” he said.

Allowing children to get vaccinated will further prevent spread of Covid-19 in the community and aid the safe reopening of schools.

Evidence from countries including Israel and the US, where Covid-19 restrictions have eased significantly, shows infections in young children have risen.

During Queensland’s most recent Delta-strain Covid-19 cluster, more than 90 children aged 19 or younger were infected.

Infectious disease expert Dr Paul Griffin said there was also emerging evidence that children can suffer from “long Covid”, which includes ongoing fatigue, “brain fog” and respiratory issues.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison thanked state and territory leaders for their expansion of state-run hotel quarantine systems for the 4100 evacuees from Afghanistan who have begun arriving in Australia.

The meeting was also addressed by Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly, who took the leaders through the hot spots in the current outbreaks.

Nationally, the vaccination rollout continues to gather pace with the news that children between 12 and 15 will start getting Pfizer on September 13.

So far 18.3 million vaccine doses have been given in Australia, including 307,090 on Thursday with 55 per cent of people aged 16 years partially protected and more than a third fully vaccinated.