Southern Downs Covid cases rise by over 100

Officially recorded cases of Covid-19 in the Southern Downs have jumped up by over 100 cases today.

By Dominique Tassell

Officially recorded cases of Covid-19 in the Southern Downs have jumped up by over 100 cases today.

The Southern Downs now has 401 cases of Covid-19, up from yesterday’s number of 290 by 111 cases.

Queensland recorded 22,069 new cases today, with 525 people in hospital.

Health Minister Yvette D’Ath stated that 30 people are in the ICU, with eight of those people requiring ventilators.

Chief Health Officer John Gerrard stated in the press conference this morning that the unvaccinated are nine times more likely to end up in the hospital than those who have received their two shots and booster.

“We know that double vaccination is not as good as triple vaccination in terms of preventing hospitalisation and particularly (we’re) seeing a large proportion of the hospitalised are more vulnerable,” he said.

“We know if we didn’t have a vaccination program as we’ve had in the last 12 months here in Queensland, the health system would clearly be overwhelmed.”

Ms D’Ath stated they would not be mandating the booster but are working to make booster shots more readily available, with a focus on providing them to health workers.

She also highlighted the struggle regarding sourcing Rapid Antigen Tests (RATs) at the moment.

“The figures I saw this morning was 120,000 tests have been distributed to our testing clinics in the last 24 hours,” she said.

“We’re expecting just short of a million from the Commonwealth in the next week, but around 500,000 of those are point-of-care tests.”

Ms D’Ath said there were only two local government areas in the state without any recorded COVID-19 infections since December 13.

Currently, a reported 91.23 per cent of Queensland aged 16 and over have received at least one dose of a vaccine, with 88.02 per cent reportedly receiving two doses.