Covid vaccination won’t equal freedom in Queensland

Queensland government steps away from easing border restrictions when national vaccination rates reach 80 per cent.

Deputy Premier Steven Miles said reopening borders would depend on much more than vaccination rates. Picture: Picture: Liam Kidston

The Queensland government has stepped away from easing border restrictions when national vaccination rates reach 80 per cent, saying that figure was agreed to prior to the New South Wales Covid outbreak.

As Queensland recorded another day with zero cases in contrast to New South Wales’ 830 infections, Deputy Premier Steven Miles said reopening borders would depend on much more than vaccination rates.

Backed by deputy chief health officer James Smith, Mr Miles said case loads, hospitalisations and the situation in other states all needed to be taken into consideration.

“We’re not going to get ahead of ourselves. We look to what’s happening in New South Wales every day and adjust our posture accordingly,” said Mr Miles.

“It’s why we’ve got this new strictest ever border in place right now and why we’re racing to get as many people vaccinated as we can because we want to achieve those thresholds. We’re signed up and committed to the plan that national cabinet endorsed but that was a plan that was endorsed before the New South Wales outbreak.”

Dr Smith agreed it was prudent to “dial up and dial down” restrictions in response to case numbers.

“It’s not all about vaccinations. They’re the biggest tool in our shed but it’s not necessarily the case we’ll be able to dial back completely on restrictions once we hit desirable vaccination targets,” said Dr Smith.

Deputy Chief Health Officer Dr James Smith. Picture: Liam Kidston

“That said (vaccination) is our ticket to dialling back and the higher the vaccination coverage the greater the improvement you'd expect to see and the amount of restrictions that get eased.”

Mr Miles also took aim at Scott Morrison, who he said was to blame for the NSW outbreak that had jeopardised Australia’s plan to reopen this year.

“I think it’s pretty incredible to see that while the country’s most populated state is in the grips of a Covid crisis, the Prime Minister is busy blaming other states for what might or might not happen in November,” said Mr Miles.

“He’s doing that because if those time frames are in jeopardy, it’s because of the NSW outbreak, an outbreak he’s refused to take any responsibility for despite his failure to get enough vaccines, his failure to deliver regional quarantine hubs that could’ve avoided the NSW outbreak and his insistence that the NSW Premier delay their lockdown which ultimately resulted in this outbreak.”

Fewer people were trying to cross the NSW-Queensland border in the wake of tougher measures, with only 2715 vehicles intercepted by police at Coolangatta on Saturday.

Of those, 142 were turned back including 12 essential workers who had not met the requirement of having had at least one Covid jab.

Mr Miles insisted the policy was not putting lives in Queensland at risk.

“The test here is whether there’s anyone else in Queensland who can do that job, whether we need you here,” he said.

The Deputy Premier also announced that taxis, ride-share vehicles and limousines would be required to adopt the QR code check-in system from August 30 to help with contact tracing.

He said the move, which has already been adopted in Victoria, NSW, South Australia and the ACT, was prompted by the case of an infected taxi driver in Cairns.

Taxi Council of Queensland chief executive Blair Davies said it was something they had been calling for, for a number of weeks and welcomed the initiative.

He revealed about a third of drivers were currently vaccinated and demand for cabs and ride-share vehicles had rebounded to 80 per cent of pre-Covid levels.

“We’ve got some drivers who’ll be concerned about the customers’ resistance to scanning in, but that’s one of the things that we do. It’s part of living in this post pandemic world,” said Mr Davies.