Grim marker as Queensland Indigenous deaths hit 11 since entry eased

Eleven Indigenous people have died from Covid-19 in Queensland since the state threw open its domestic border seven weeks ago.

Queensland Health Minister Yvette D'Ath in Brisbane on Tuesday. Picture: Dan Peled

Eleven Indigenous people have died from Covid-19 in Queensland since the state threw open its domestic border seven weeks ago and Omicron infections surged, in a grim marker of the toll on Aboriginal and Islander populations.

The fatality numbers released on Tuesday by state Health Minister Yvette D’Ath were the first to be broken out in a jurisdiction containing some of the nation’s largest and most vulnerable Indigenous communities.

Ms D’Ath said Queensland had recorded no Indigenous deaths from the virus until travel resumed with hard-hit NSW and Victoria on December 13, coinciding with the emergence of the hyper-infectious Omicron variant.

The known number of First Nations’ people to have tested positive across the state stood at 16,256. “Those 11 deaths obviously are tragic, but I’m pleased … we are not seeing a disproportionate number of First Nations’ people passing away from this virus at the current time,” she said.

The surge in Queensland comes as communities in the Northern Territory struggle with mounting Covid case numbers and lagging vaccination rates in some places.

Updated figures show 1092 new infections reported in the NT for the 24 hours to Tuesday, with a total of 178 people in hospital of whom five were in ICU.

These patients were mainly ­Indigenous, said Jason Agostino, a medical adviser to the peak Nat­ional Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation.

He said most of the 45 Indigenous Covid deaths recorded to date had been in NSW, followed by the 11 in Queensland, with the NT on five deaths.

“People keep downplaying Omicron, but more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have died in the first five weeks of this year than in the previous two years of the pandemic,” he said.

The situation in the far-flung Indigenous communities of Queensland’s Cape York Peninsula underlines how the virus is penetrating previously spared communities. The remote hospital service area that reaches north into Torres Strait has 402 active cases, including 69 at Bamaga atop the peninsula, 78 at Thursday Island, 23 at Aurukun and 32 at Kowanyama.

Despite a stepped-up drive to speed vaccination in Indigenous communities, the double-vaxed rate in far north Queensland taking in Cairns was 62.3 per cent as of Sunday, against 90 per cent statewide and 93.8 per cent ­nationally.

Queensland Health said only 72 per cent of First Nations’ people were fully vaccinated.

Dr Agostino said Aboriginal and islander people were being admitted to ICUs and dying at about twice the rate of non-Indigenous Australians. “It is not proportionate,” he said. “And even though there is a lower rate of death than what we saw with Delta, we are seeing a lot of deaths.”

Ms D’Ath said actual case numbers in the state’s Indigenous ­communities would be “far ­greater” than the reported data.

Queensland Health said in a statement: “We are pulling out all the stops to encourage vaccination among First Nations’ people, including going door-to-door; facilitating question and answer sessions; spreading the vaccination message through community leaders, elders and sports stars; mobilising vaccination teams from across the health network; targeted outreach clinics; and providing transport options to vaccination clinics as required.”