Chief health officer provides insight into life in Queensland after Omicron peaks

The chief health officer has revealed what life will look like after the Omicron peak with new mutant strains, a long tail-end to the wave and second boosters all on the cards.

The state’s chief health officer has provided an insight into life after Omicron peaks while he said Queenslanders could “breathe a little easier” as cases remained lower than first feared.

Dr John Gerrard said once Queensland passed the Omicron peak and cases “over time” started to fall, changes to Covid rules would have to be considered.

“Once we’re over this peak, we’re all going to regroup and look again at our approach to Covid,” he said.

“I think both at a state level and a national level. I have a feeling this tail will go on for sometime. I don’t think it will be as simple as the flu.”

Chief health officer Dr John Gerrard. Picture: John Gass

Dr Gerrard said going forward it was possible the state could introduce another booster against Omicron as the pandemic was now “very different” to what was happening in 2020.

“That third dose does seem to make a difference in terms of your risk of being hospitalised,” he said.

“One of the critical decisions that will need to be made in the coming months is whether or not there will be another booster related to the Omicron strain.”

But these decisions would only come following the peak of the Omicron strain as the state moves forward into uncharted territory, according to Dr Gerrard.

“Let’s not jump the gun too much. We can breathe a little bit easier as it appears we’re passing the peak, but there’ll be another phase to this,” he said.

Covid rules will be reconsidered after Queensland passes the Omicron peak. Picture: Dan Peled

Dr Gerrard said he expected the virus will continue to mutate “for years to come”.

“I think it doesn’t pay to speculate on whether there’ll be other variants that will come forward,” he said.

“This virus will continue to mutate for years to come, but whether it will get worse … It’s probably not the time to speculate at this point, we’re just focusing on getting over this peak.”

But Dr Gerrard said reduced case numbers and hospitalisations had him feeling “optimistic”.

“Definitely becoming more optimistic as days go by,” he said.

“The projections of what we were expecting to see look like they probably won’t eventuate.

“I don’t want to jump the gun, I don’t want to jinx us but certainly what we’re seeing is very positive here.”

Since December, multiple experts had been predicting that Queensland would see thousands of cases in hospitals during the peak.

“At this stage in terms of public hospitals, we haven’t reached a thousand. Probably combined with the private hospitals we probably have reached a thousand. But let’s not jump the gun yet, we’re not there yet,” Dr Gerrard said.

Gold Coast cases were projected to hit the peak earlier than the rest of southeast Queensland due to lower vaccination rates, and now, Dr Gerrard said hospitalisations on the coast were starting to decline.

However, he warned that the Greater Brisbane region still hadn’t reached its peak despite some regions starting to see reduced numbers.

“There were significant numbers in Cairns in the last 48 hours, although the numbers in the last 24 hours appear to have dropped,” he said.

“But it’s just one day and I don’t want to draw too much of an inference from one day.

“We have seen slight declines in the last 24 hours in pressure points like Ipswich and Logan, but it’s just one day.

“We like to see a pattern of three to four days before we get more confident.”