Queensland border could open earlier than flagged

The Queensland border could open earlier than July 10, with Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young revealing she could move faster than the state’s restrictions roadmap, while “some work” has been done on how a travel bubble with other states including might occur.

THE Queensland border could open earlier than July 10 and plans for a “travel bubble” are already in the works, with Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young revealing she could move faster than the state’s restrictions roadmap if Australian cases remain very low.

It came as Dr Young and Health Minister Steven Miles updated media on the state’s COVID-19 cases, of which there were no new ones recorded overnight, with tourism authorities “rejoicing” at the possibility of an earlier reopening.

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Dr Young said “unless of course something was very different either way”, the July 10 date stood.

“If things were a lot better then of course we could bring that date forward, as did happen for this month’s stage two,” she said.

“Or if something were to happen interstate, I’m sure everyone would expect that we then push that date out.”

Mr Miles said “some work” had been done on how a travel bubble with other states including NSW might occur should Victorian cases remain higher than elsewhere in the country.

“Our preference though would be to lift the borders all at once, preferably on the 10th of July,” he said.

“It would be possible (to introduce a travel bubble before July 10), I think it’s probably unlikely.

“It’s difficult to see how we could enforce something like that.

“Certainly throughout this whole situation we’ve assessed all of the possible options and that’s been one that has been considered at different points in time.

“There’s legal difficulty, there’s also the practical difficulty of how you implement that both at the physical border and at airports.”

Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young and Health Minister Steven Miles pictured today. Picture: David Clark

Mr Miles said continuing low COVID cases could see other restrictions eased faster, as had been announced in Victoria today.

“We continue to assess those stages,” he said.

“We brought stage two forward very substantially and so we’ll continue to consider based on the facts and the evidence what we can do as quickly as we can do so safely.”

Asked outright whether borders could reopen before July 10 if active cases remained very low, Dr Young said: “It depends. It’s really what happens at the end of June as to what will happen then for that stage of the roadmap.”

“At the end of this month we will review all of that epidemiology, not only ours here in Queensland but from across the country to make those decisions around our borders,” she said.

Dr Young said there were still some ongoing levels of community transfer in southern states, but she indicated small levels were no longer an absolute impediment to the border reopening.

The Chief Health Officer made the comments as she has dropped her hardline stance around wanting to see a month of no community transfers in other states before reopening the borders, instead labelling that scenario as “the ideal”.

She said that would no longer have “the same degree of significance” as in previous months when authorities would not have been able to manage cases that may arise from interstate travel.

“We’ve got to remember that we’re in a totally different position in Queensland today than we were back in March,” she said.

“In March we were seeing up to 80 notifications a day, which meant for each notification we would have to contact trace up to maybe 100 people.

“We’re now seeing one notification every couple of days and we’ve seen the requirement for a lot fewer contact tracing to occur … so we can take that into consideration when we look at what happens with our borders.”

Mr Miles said he wanted borders to open as soon as possible, but as safely as possible.

Queensland Tourism Industry Council CEO Daniel Gschwind said operators would be “rejoicing” at suggestions the border may open sooner.

“We would be absolutely in the cheer squad to bring forward the opening of the board,” he said.

“That would be an absolute shot in the arm for tourism businesses who are keen to see that certainty so businesses can plan and customers can book. “Because it’s the uncertainty that prevents people from booking holidays, even if they make it possible to travel, if nobody books for it there’ll be no interstate business to be had.”