Superintendent Dave Cuskelly on police intercepts, road blocks in Ipswich for Covid compliance

Law enforcement has been called in to keep Covidiots in check as the state’s Delta strain numbers climb.

Superintendent Dave Cuskelly said Ipswich police are stepping up checks across the city. A road stop has been set up in Bundamba.

Ipswich police are stepping up checks to ensure residents are complying by Covid restrictions with at least another three days of lockdown left.

The city’s top cop said very few fines have been handed out since Saturday but urged people to constantly reconsider whether they needed to leave the house.

Queensland recorded 27 new cases on Thursday, with 16 of those linked to the southeast’s Delta cluster.

Superintendent Dave Cuskelly said he was impressed by Ipswich’s behaviour during the lockdown.

The other 11 cases are located on an LNG tanker off the Port of Gladstone and were acquired overseas.

Ipswich Superintendent Dave Cuskelly commended the discipline of local residents and although he couldn’t confirm an exact number, he said only a “minimal” number of fines had been handed out in the last four days.

“Recent high visibility policing efforts within the Ipswich district around observing the chief health officer’s directives have been encouraging, with good community compliance shown,” he said.

“We’ve stepped up our interceptions of motorists around the place to verify why they’re travelling.

“The purpose of the interception is to verify people’s residential address and the compliance with the chief health officers’ directives.

“We also have static interception sites to verify where they live and making sure they’re complaint and not (more than) 10 kilometres from home.

“General compliance has been good but we’d still encourage people to consider what they’re doing.

“If you don’t need to be travelling (for essential reasons) you should be at home.

“People have been supportive of the police, they know what they’re trying to do.”

Chief health officer Dr Jeannette Young said she was “hopeful” the lockdown would be lifted on Sunday based on the latest numbers.

“I didn’t expect we’d be so far in front of the virus,” she said.

“It doesn’t mean we’re through it yet, we’ve still got a long way to go but we have done really, really, really well until now so let’s see how we go in the next few days.

“Let’s see if we can lift those restrictions on Sunday.

“That would be extremely special … I am hopeful we can.

“If we are able to get out of this on Sunday, it’ll be the quickest response to a cluster of this size anywhere.”

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