Premier announces new satellite hospital amid latest Covid numbers

Queensland has recorded 3750 new cases and six people who have died from the virus overnight. Three of the six were in aged care, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has revealed.

Queensland has recorded 3750 new cases and six people who have died from the virus overnight.

Three of the six were in aged care.

Chief health officer John Gerrard said of the deaths, one person was in their 50s, one in their 60s, one in their 80s and two in their 90s, one of them was unvaccinated. None of them had received a booster dose.

He said there were 40 people in the Intensive Care Unit with 20 ventilated.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk. Picture: Adam Head

Dr Gerrard said he thought some people had held out for Novavax and vaccine numbers would increase somewhat.

There were 963 cases of school-aged children with Covid-19 in the past 24 hours. Dr Gerrard said they would be watching Covid spread in schools “very closely.”

Health Minister Yvette D’Ath said modelling was showing a decline in the number of positive cases in children.

It comes as Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced the site of Queensland’s seventh satellite hospital at Eight Mile Plains. The hospitals would be at Eight Mile Plains, Caboolture, Redlands, Pine Rivers, Tugun, Bribie Island and Ripley.

Earlier, Dr Gerrard revealed the state has halved the number of patients hospitalised with Covid in just 19 days.

He said there were positive signs when it came to hospital data.

“The data I find most useful in terms of tracking this pandemic is the hospitalisation data and this is really taking a very positive turn,” he said.

“So we have 462 people in our public hospitals, being treated for Covid-19. Just 19 days ago we were at our peak of 928 patients, so in 19 days we have halved the number of people that are in our hospitals, so clearly we are well on track to coming to the end of this wave of infection.

“The other thing we are looking at very closely are infections in children, given the schools returned on Monday.

“We are averaging about between 1000 and 1500 children diagnosed formally with Covid per day across the state – almost all of whom have very mild disease.”

Queensland recorded 7311 new cases of Covid yesterday and four people – three who live in residential aged car – lost their lives.

Three of the deceased people were in their 80s, one was in their 90s.

Dr Gerrard said there still was no trend with children, but suggested it would not be a surprise if there was a big increase in cases among children in the near future.

Health Minister Yvette D’Ath said it was pleasing to see falling hospitalisation rates.

Dr Gerrard said Queensland had fared much better than expected because of “wide-scale vaccination”.