Eight new Queensland coronavirus cases, prediction of a million more

Queensland will eventually see about 1 million cases of coronavirus, but the state’s health authorities insist that point is still months away, as more cases are recorded on Friday.

Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young said there had been eight more cases recorded, bringing the total to 35.

Dr Young said this was in line with their modelling that showed the number of cases would eventually reach one-in-four people in Queensland.

Queensland Chief Health Officer Dr Jeannette Young has confirmed the state's coronavirus total now stands at 35 after eight fresh cases were recordedCredit: AAP/Dan Peled

“This is all modelling, but the best advice we have is for around 25 per cent of the Queensland population getting this disease in the next six months,” she said.

“Now 80 per cent of them will get a very mild disease, they’ll possibly hardly even know they have anything.”

Dr Young clarified that the modelling indicated 20 per cent of those, or about 200,000 people, would require hospitalisation, with a smaller proportion again having a severe disease and 1 per cent dying from it.

She insisted that as far as she was aware, the virus was still fully contained in Queensland and was not spreading within the community as it is in NSW.

“I am convinced we do not have sustained community transmission of the COVID-19 virus in Queensland today [Friday],” she said.

“Yesterday we did over 1000 tests and eight of those were positive.

“This is how an epidemic starts, and we saw that happen - we initially had one case, and then another, a few more, and that’s increasing to seven or eight each day, that’s expected.”

The most recent cases include a man who travelled to Rockhampton and became unwell, and a person in Kingaroy, inland from the Sunshine Coast, representing the first time the virus has spread outside the state’s south-east corner.

It also comes on the back of large public festivals in southern states being cancelled, as well as the Grand Prix, which was cancelled on Friday after a week of authorities insisting it would go ahead.

Despite this, Dr Young said there was no change to the advice for public gatherings, and the opening-round NRL match between the Broncos and the Cowboys in Townsville tonight was still able to go ahead with no restrictions on the crowd.

“We are an enormous country, we have 25 million people scattered throughout the continent," she said.

“Compare that to somewhere like Italy, we haven’t seen the entirety of Europe close down, so although we’re one country we won't have one policy.”

She compared the situation to a natural disaster like a bushfire or a cyclone, requiring an emergency response, but not needing the entire state to shut down.

“We don’t close down our whole state because we’ve got a cyclone impacting one part of it, we work through where the impact is, that’s where we deal with it,” Dr Young said.

For his part, Health Minister Steven Miles said he had the utmost confidence in health authorities' ability to contain the virus for the time being before it escalated to the next phase.

“All of our focus has been in preparing our hospitals for that likely impact, and I think we’ve provided quite a bit of detail about what our modelling says, so that’s been our focus,” he said.

Despite this, the Queensland Council of Unions announced the "tough decision" to call off its Labour Day marches statewide in May, with about 70,000 taking part last year.

General secretary Michael Clifford said many of these were health, education, community safety and transport workers who would be "at the forefront" of the community response to the virus.

KFC has closed its Deagon store in Brisbane's north "until further notice" after a staff member returned a positive test. All employees exposed to the person are now self-isolating, a spokesperson said.

St Patrick's College in nearby Shorncliffe said it was in contact with parents after three of its students had been asked to self-isolate by their employer, though none had returned positive tests.

Surfing's global governing body joined a number of other sporting organisations in cancelling or postponing major events in the wake of the pandemic declaration, dumping the opening leg of the 2020 championship tour due to be held on the Gold Coast from March 26.