Queensland records six new overseas-acquired cases as State Government ramps up regional vaccine rollout

Dr Jeannette Young has revealed what it will take for her to support the reopening of Queensland’s borders after the state recorded no community transmission and six overseas cases overnight.

Chief health officer Dr Jeannette Young said she would be comfortable for the state’s borders to be opened once every single Queenslander, aged 12 years or older has been given the chance to be vaccinated.

“Then it’s people’s choice, and I hope people choose the vaccine,” she said.

She said she did not believe that everyone had been given the chance to be vaccinated yet.

It comes as Health Minister Yvette D’Ath urges regional Queenslanders to come forward and get vaccinated to prevent their community from becoming “ground zero” in an outbreak.

Queensland recorded no new local Covid cases overnight while six overseas-acquired cases have been detected, including five on the ship Imabari Queen off the state’s coast.

Speaking from Mackay, Ms D’Ath said Mackay had low vaccination rates and she was urging everyone to come out and get jabbed.

“This is as real as it gets,” she said.

“NSW has had over 60,000 cases in three months from one person since June.

“That is half of the population of Mackay in just three months from one case in NSW.

“And sadly they’ve recorded over 300 deaths.

“You don’t want your community to become ground zero in an outbreak.”

Health Minister Yvette D'Ath. Picture: John Gass

Ms D’Ath said Covid would come to “every town in Queensland” and said now was the time for people to get vaccinated, not after an outbreak started.” We should be getting ahead of the virus, we should be getting protected now, not waiting until people are in ICU wards,” she said.” In NSW, people have died in their homes, we don’t want that happening in that community.”

Almost 15,000 people have been tested in the past 24 hour and 68.2 per cent of the eligible Queenslanders have had their first dose and 49.53 per cent their second dose.

Ms D’Ath said some schools will start delivering vaccines, including Mackay’s Northern Beaches High School.

Ms D’Ath confirmed that a home quarantine trial would start on October 11.

People must be fully vaccinated, live within two hours of Brisbane airport, be able to quarantine at home or have the whole household quarantine together.

D’Ath said regarding home quarantining for returned overseas travellers in Queensland she was waiting to see what the results were from the South Australian trial currently underway.

Ms D’Ath said purpose built facilities like Wellcamp would not be made redundant by more widespread use of home quarantine.

International students, people who don’t meet home quarantine criteria and international farm workers are some of the people who would still use Wellcamp, she said.

Asked whether giving Queenslanders a concrete answer on when borders would open would help encourage boost vaccination rates, Ms D’Ath said “let’s reverse the argument”.

“It’s up to you,” she said.

“You get to decide how quick we get to those targets.

“The quicker you get vaccinated...the quicker we open our economy fully up.”

The national plan released by the national cabinet would see borders opened once states hit 80 per cent of their eligible population fully vaccinated.

However, the Premier has consistently said there was no guarantee Queensland would open its borders even once it hit the 80 per cent target and won’t say what the trigger would be for her to open borders.

Chief health officer Dr Jeannette Young. Picture: Sarah Marshall

Dr Young said of the six new cases – one was detected in hotel quarantine and the other five were detected on a ship off the western coast of Cape York.

She said authorities are working with the ship now to see how sick the people are to determine whether they would need to be evacuated.

Dr Young said she was very hopeful that home quarantine would be an option for most returning Queenslanders by December.

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“Let’s wait, let’s not jump ahead of ourselves, we’ve got a trial starting Monday,” she said.

She said anyone who would like to be part of the home quarantining in the future needs to go and get vaccinated.

Dr Young said that other regional areas, like Cairns and Townsville that have airports with direct flights arriving from interstate, may be considered for home quarantine in the future but she wanted to see the result of the trial first.