Queensland remains cautious about reopening its southern border as Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk blasts NSW’s health minister and the prime minister.

October 9, 2020

Queensland is sticking to its guns in its COVID-19 border war with NSW, with Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk launching a broadside at the prime minister over a national agreement on declaring virus hotspots.

“There was a proposal that was supposed to go to national cabinet and for some reason, unbeknown to me, the prime minister decided not to bring that forward,” Ms Palaszczuk told reporters on Friday.

“The (Australian Health Protection Principal Committee) had agreed, is my understanding, on a set of terms and conditions and it never proceeded to national cabinet.”

She also blasted NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard after he reportedly said he had proof Queensland had politicised the border reopening but then refused to reveal it.

“Well that’s rubbish. Can he just concentrate on his own issues as health minister in NSW and get on top of those cases,” she said.

“I am not gong to be distracted by someone trying to distract from what is happening in their own state.”

Earlier, Deputy Premier Steven Miles said Queensland health officials were closely monitoring NSW’s efforts to contain a community outbreak in southwestern Sydney.

“In recent days NSW is reporting similar numbers to Victoria. In fact, yesterday NSW had more cases,” he said.

He said it was disappointing NSW did not want to “share the aspiration” to control community transmission, as other states and territories did.

“They’ve effectively given up on that goal of 28 days of no unlinked transmission,” he said.

Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young was less pessimistic, saying NSW had now found links for seven of the eight cases that had broken out in the community.

“They have a further 10 cases today. Five of them in hotel quarantine, which of course aren’t any risk at all, and then five in the community,” she said.

“But for all five of them, they know how they’ve acquired those cases.

“So NSW has extremely good contact tracing capability and they’re using that at the moment.”

Dr Young said she was feeling more confident about the situation in NSW but not ready to make a decision over the 28-day community transmission clock or planned border reopening on November 1.

“We just need to wait a bit longer before we decide whether or not there’s been any need to change that planned opening to NSW,” she said.

“We use that 28 days of no unlinked community cases to assist in determining whether it’s safe.

“We’ve got to wait until the end of the month … They are getting continuing cases.”

Dr Young said Queensland health officials also continue to monitor sewage in the Whitsunday Region, with quite a few positive tests in Cannonvale and Airlie Beach.

Meanwhile, she said brain cancer patient Gary Ralph, 71, would be allowed to quarantine at home in Queensland after returning from Sydney, where he had undergone surgery.

Mr Ralph’s operation reportedly affected his ability to speak and doctors requested he be allowed to self-isolate at home but health officials ordered him into hotel quarantine before moving him to a government medi-hotel.

“There are a few conditions on that. I’ve asked for an urgent COVID test to be done … We’re waiting on those results,” Dr Young said.

Queensland recorded no new cases in the 24 hours to Friday morning.

There are just four active cases in the state and 5555 tests were completed.