QLD records zero new local Covid-19 cases on Monday

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk is already looking into holding another ‘Super-Pfizer Weekend’ after at least 56,000 residents were vaccinated in the past two days. It comes as no new locally acquired Covid-19 cases were recorded overnight.

Queensland has recorded no new local cases of Covid-19, with two detected in hotel quarantine.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk made the announcement as she revealed 56,907 had been vaccinated over the state’s Super Pfizer Weekend.

“That’s the equivalent of having the entire population of Hervey Bay vaccinated over the weekend,” she said from the city, where she is hosting a community Cabinet.

She said she was confident the state had now ticked over to 60 per cent of Queenslanders with their first shot.

“However we need to drive those vaccination rates even higher,” she said.

“We don’t want to see our hospitals overwhelmed and our people sick .... we have to be absolutely super prepared.”

“What we’re trying to do here in Queensland is protect our freedoms.”

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk. Picture: Liam Kidston

Health Minister Yvette D’Ath said one of the hotel quarantine cases was a man who had arrived from Sydney and tested positive on the first day in quarantine.

Information will be released about his flight, but Ms D’Ath said because the flight was from Sydney, it was treated as a high Covid-risk anyway.

The other was overseas-acquired and there are no concerns held about it.

Another case, which is not counted in Queensland’s number is a man who had since tested positive in the NT.

That man had flown from Newcastle to Darwin via Brisbane on September 17.

She said Queensland Health would release information regarding exposure sites.

Queensland has reported no new locally acquired Covid-19 cases after at least 56,000 residents were vaccinated in the weekend’s ‘Super-Pfizer’ push.

Ms Palaszczuk said she was “so proud” of those who had come out to be vaccinated.

She said planning meetings would be held now to look at the success of the walk-in clinics and she was confident there would be a repeat.

“We are looking at when we can hold the next Super Pfizer Weekend,” she said.

“The Super Pfizer Weekend showed us that Queenslanders were willing to come out in droves.”

Ms Palaszczuk said while people in NSW and Victoria were getting protected because of their outbreaks, Queenslanders had a different incentive.

“They are vaccinating to get their freedoms,” she said.

“In Queensland I need families to get vaccinated to protect their freedoms,” she said.

The Premier said the roadmaps set out in those southern states still contained less freedoms than Queenslanders were enjoying now.

It comes as new figures show the majority of people dying from Covid-19 around the world and interstate are unvaccinated.

The New South Wales government has revealed 89 per cent of people who have died from Covid-19 in that state since March were either unvaccinated or had only received one dose.

In the UK, of the 51,281 people who died from Covid-19 in the first six months of this year just 256 were fully vaccinated, while data from the USA shows unvaccinated people are 10 times more likely to die of the virus.

Queensland Infectious disease expert Dr Paul Griffin said the figures showed exactly what experts in the field had been saying about the vaccines.

“It’s always great to be able to reinforce context with data and we have seen so much proof of exactly this, disease vaccines are both very safe and highly effective,” he said,

“While there has been discussion about not protecting 100 per cent of the time from infection, it does go such a long way to protecting from severe disease.

“Those people that do get infected while already vaccinated are less likely to pass it on and much less likely to get sick and get severe disease.”

The NSW data revealed from 1 March to 28 August 2021, only 11 per cent of people who died from Covid-19 were fully vaccinated.

The report noted of the 91 deaths in the period, many of the fully vaccinated people who lost their lives to Covid-19 had underlying conditions, meaning they were less able to recover from serious infection.

Only 1.4 per cent of people with Covid-19 admitted to ICU were fully vaccinated.

Figures analysed from the Office for National Statistics found that of 51,281 Covid-19 deaths in the UK this year, only 256 had been fully vaccinated – with 193 of those classed as clinically extremely vulnerable to Covid-19.

Research from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in the USA taking in data from 13 states showed 6132 people who died from Covid-19 were unvaccinated, compared to the 616 that were vaccinated.

Even with new variants, Dr Griffin said the figures reinforced the importance of getting the jab.

“There will be some people that no matter how much data you show them will remain inherently sceptical.”

“That’s okay but we need to try and have as much evidence based support as possible and I think we need to be good at communicating it so people outside of the area can understand what these studies are showing and they are indeed backing up what we’ve been saying all along.”

He said initiatives like the super Pfizer weekend went a long way to help vaccination rates rise across Queensland but there was still a way to go.

“We essentially remain vulnerable until rates get higher, we have to keep working hard to get those rates up as quickly as we can.”