Police have threatened to erect beach barricades unless people stop sunbaking and relaxing at popular holiday spots during lockdown.
Photos emerged of crowds on Noosa on Wednesday despite the south-east being in a three-day lockdown in which shopping, exercise and work are the only reasons to be outside.
It comes as there were only two new locally acquired cases overnight and two in hotel quarantine which Premier Anastacia Palaszczuk said was “very very encouraging”.
One of the locally acquired cases was an Alpha strain linked to the Portuguese restaurant and that person was already in quarantine.
The second case was a 37-year-old woman who worked at the check-in area for Qatar Airlines at Brisbane International Airport.
The low numbers of cases plus the near-record levels of testing, with 29,990 people coming forward, offered hope of the three-day lockdown ending on Friday 6pm, however Ms Palaszczuk said there was still 24 hours to go.
“But it’s very, very encouraging news at this stage,” she said.
Deputy Commissioner Steve Gollschewski said it was very disappointing to see people do the wrong thing and sunbake which was against the lockdown rules.
Health minister Yvette D’Ath said there were also reports of people being abusive towards staff while waiting to get vaccinated at the Sunshine Coast University Hospital (SCUH) amid fears Pfizer supplies were days away from running out.
“If people want to go to the beaches to exercise that’s fine provided they are in their local area and if they out here they are still required to wear a mask unless they are in the process of exercising,” said Deputy Commissioner Gollschewski.
“So that (people sunbaking) was quite disappointing. Having said that, our police engaged, people were given the opportunity to comply and they did.
“And if we can’t get compliance on our beaches, we’ll have no alternative but work with councils to start putting some barricades and things up.”
Ms D’Ath reassured people who had already had their first dose of Pfizer that they would be prioritised for the second dose and should not get stressed or upset at hospital staff.
“Can I ask the public to be respectful to our staff working tirelessly to get Queenslanders vaccinated,” said Ms D’Ath.
“And whether it’s testing staff or vaccination, we are so grateful for our health workers and what they are doing each and every day.
“They don’t deserve any abuse in the roles that they’re undertaking. We know people are anxious. We know people want to get tested and vaccinated. We respect that.
“But we also want you to respect our workforce and what they are doing to keep us safe.”
Ms D’Ath said SCUH was among five Queensland hospitals to which she had sent letters on the topic of getting the entire workforce vaccinated.
Earlier
Blame between state and federal politicians over Queensland’s latest COVID outbreak has reached fever pitch.
In her latest attack, the Premier called for overseas arrivals to be slashed by up to 75 per cent.
In an interview with ABC’s 7.30 on Wednesday night, Annastacia Palaszczuk doubled down on her criticism of the federal government’s management of quarantine and the vaccine rollout, saying it had let Australians down.
“We have had… a magical moment in time we are never going to get back, where we could have had the entire population vaccinated before the virus arrived in this way,” she said.
The Queensland premier and her deputy Steven Miles had earlier called for a drastic reduction in the number of overseas arrivals.
The pair say they were frustrated to learn the outbreak – which has resulted in lockdown for millions of Queenslanders – had been sparked by an unvaccinated traveller who made repeated trips between Australia and Indonesia.
The man infected a receptionist at Brisbane’s Prince Charles Hospital.
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Ms Palaszczuk echoed those demands on Wednesday night.
“I would like to see a massive reduction. We need to do this now because we need to contain this Delta strain … 50 per cent, 75 per cent, let’s reduce this right down,” she said.
She also criticised the prime minister, saying national cabinet had not discussed whether to offer the AstraZeneca vaccine to people under the age of 40, if they accepted the risk of blood clots.
“It was extraordinary to hear the prime minister say (that). There was no such decision taken at national cabinet.”
But Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews hit back, accusing the Queensland government of misrepresenting Australian Bureau of Statistics data on overseas arrivals.
“What Premier Palaszczuk and her deputy Stephen Miles are doing is trying to create a distraction from their own quarantine failures,” she said.
The state government is facing criticism after it emerged the receptionist at the centre of the cluster was not vaccinated, despite working near a COVID ward.
She was active in the community for 10 days while infectious, and the state says it will investigate why she wasn’t vaccinated.
Three new community cases were reported in the state on Wednesday, all of which are linked to existing clusters, while one new case was recorded in hotel quarantine.
Two of the three recent cases are close contacts of previous cases and have been in isolation, while the third is the brother of the receptionist at Brisbane’s Prince Charles Hospital.
Contact tracers are now scrambling to work out if the boy infected others at a school holiday tennis camp at the Wooloowin tennis centre.
Health authorities are now awaiting case numbers to help determine if the state’s three-day lockdown will end on time.
The state’s partial lockdown covers residents of Brisbane, Ipswich, Logan City, Moreton Bay, Redlands, the Sunshine Coast, Noosa, Somerset, Lockyer Valley, Scenic Rim, the Gold Coast, Townsville, Magnetic Island and nearby Palm Island.
