Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk ending all interstate border restrictions on the same day she announced six deaths might seem counterintuitive. But it’s not.
Until now, from a public health perspective at least, it did the job.
The reality is the COVID-zero boat sailed some time ago. Omicron assured that. We don’t even know how many people have COVID in Queensland, other than it’s certainly well above the 145,000-odd known cases.Queensland’s tough stance was never — never — going to keep COVID at bay indefinitely. It was not designed to.
The main driver was the avoidance of the systemic collapse of the state’s health system. So far, that has worked.The Mediterranean nation, that birthplace of empires, was one of the first brought to its knees after COVID escaped the confines of China.Hospitals overflowed. Patients died in the hallways. DoctorsAs horrifying as this current COVID wave is to a population relatively untouched during the pandemic, Queensland is not facing a disaster of such proportions.
There was even a glimmer of hope on Thursday, however small, when Queensland Chief Health Officer John Gerrard announced the hospitalisation figures.“We need to look for trends over days and weeks rather than individual days, but it’s kind of interesting that they’ve stabilised in the last day or two,” he said.Unlike Italy in 2020, Queensland in 2022 hosts a largely vaccinated population. Had the Omicron variant been around this time last year, we could well be facing a disaster.
. That number is the number of Queenslanders claimed by this pandemic. That number, two weeks ago, was seven.Comparatively low, sure, but that does not lessen the impact to those sitting around those 17 empty chairs at the dinner table.Keeping the border closed at this point would do nothing to limit the damage.
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