Almost 600 turned away from Qld

Since the state’s borders reopened two weeks ago, police have intercepted thousands of people and turned away almost 600 visitors who had been to a declared hotspot.

Queensland police have turned around almost 600 people from COVID-declared hot spots at the state’s borders in the past two weeks.

Since Queensland’s borders opened on a restricted basis on July 10, police have checked more than 80,000 vehicles. More than 2000 people within those cars were refused entry, the Queensland Deputy Commissioner Steve Gollschewski said on Friday.

“We have stopped 560 people who would have otherwise entered who had either been in a declared hotspot in the 14 days previous, or couldn’t prove to us they hadn’t been,” he said.

“Any one of those could have caused coronavirus transmission in our state.”

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It comes as the state marks almost six months since the emergency declaration in response to the coronavirus pandemic was declared.

“Queensland is in an excellent position … but this is not over,” he said.

“We are six months in, but we’re probably not even half way through the response to be honest.

“The community has obligations every day to keep COVID out of our state. Our primary focus remains making sure the virus doesn’t re-establish itself in the state.”

Deputy Police Commissioner Steve Gollschewski: almost 600 stopped from entering Queensland. Picture: NCA NewsWire/David Kapernick

To date, more than 913,000 border declarations have been applied for.

Yesterday’s announcement of Fairfield in Sydney being declared a COVID hotspot will come into force at 1am on Monday. Until then, push notifications will be rolled out to border residents and current declaration pass holders to ensure they update their passes to avoid traffic delays.

“The last time hot spots were declared (Campbelltown and Liverpool) we saw significant traffic delays which caused inconvenience and grief. At that point we had to intercept every NSW vehicle to make sure they hadn’t been to a hot spot,” Mr Gollschewki said.

“This time we have a few days for our communications to catch up, so that we don’t see those types of delays.

“All border residents especially should update their pass … We have a number of measures in place to better manage traffic flows.”

Mr Gollschewski said since July 10, police had met 745 flights and screened 62,853 people. A total of 38 people were turned around and 784 were placed into quarantine.

By road, 148 people were placed in quarantine and 2081 were denied entry.