New CHO focused on COVID

The new Queensland Chief Health Officer, Dr John Gerrard, will concentrate on combating COVID and leave many of the other CHO functions to his three deputies in the immediate term, he told media in his first week in the job.

Dr Gerrard, the former Director of Infectious Diseases at Gold Coast University Hospital, replaced Dr Jeannette Young just as the Queensland border reopened and the first Omicron variant infections were detected in the state.

In his first media conference, he said Queensland could expect hundreds of new cases in coming months but he does not expect hospitals to be overwhelmed, largely due to the above-expectations vaccine rollout.

“Everything is changing continually. Most of our projections were based on the Doherty modelling which looked at 80 per cent maximum and we’ve exceeded that,” Dr Gerrard said.

“I don’t think any of us expected that. I thought we would be hard pushed to get to 70 per cent vaccination rates, so when they were talking about 80 per cent, I thought that was a dream.

“Now we’re pushing towards 90 per cent.”

Dr Gerrard said the peak in infections was expected to arrive in the cooler months, but cases in vaccinated people would be mostly mild.

“I’ve been seeing COVID cases from the start of 2020. People who are vaccinated don’t get very sick. They might get a mild cold. These aren’t people who will be filling up our hospitals. It’s the small minority, mostly unvaccinated, who get very sick.

“The vast majority of people with COVID-19 in the future will be managed at home, and we have systems set up to start managing patients at home.”

AMA Queensland has been working as part of the Queensland GP Alliance with Queensland Health on clear guidelines for managing COVID patients in the community.

The booster rollout will be critically important at this time to ensure maximum protection for the community from COVID variants such as Omricon.