‘We can’t contain it’: Premier’s blunt warning about the Delta strain

The Premier of Queensland has warned that Australia simply cannot contain the new Delta variant of Covid-19 with its current systems.

In a fiery Q&A discussion on Thursday night, Annastacia Palaszczuk was asked why she wants to see the number of international arrivals into the nation drop — possibly up to a 75 per cent reduction.

She said there had been hotel quarantine breaches in nearly every major state.

“It’s not unique to Queensland,” she said. “It’s in New South Wales. It’s in Victoria. It’s in Western Australia. And it’s happened in South Australia.

Host David Speers asked whether it could be fixed by patching up holes in the system.

“I’m telling you we can’t contain this virus,” Ms Palaszczuk said.

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“It is now the most infectious strain, the Delta variant, it is going to be more and more difficult to contain it when we have something like 3000 people in our hotel quarantine.

“I’ve got nurses, I’ve got police, I’ve got a whole range of people looking after people in hotel quarantine and our resources are stretched.

“Tomorrow I’m quite sure there’s going to be a number of premiers raising with the Prime Minister (in national cabinet) to reduce the caps because we are so concerned about this Delta strain at the moment, it’s like being in a pressure cooker.”

Infectious diseases expert Michelle Ananda-Rajah said the Premier’s concerns were “justifiable” given the number of leaks.

“I know that we have been tracking at about two leaks per month,” she said.

“Last month we had seven leaks. So I think her concern is justifiable here.

“The leaks seem to be escalating and that is driven really by the contagiousness of this particular variant and it just takes a small amount to infect a person, because it’s an efficient transmitter.”

‘Shameless’: tense argument over jabs

Ms Palaszczuk’s appearance came after she and her chief health officer Jeannette Young fronted a fiery press conference in Brisbane where they refused to back down or apologise for their AstraZeneca comments on Tuesday.

The Queensland Premier had been accused of irresponsibly putting the vaccine rollout in jeopardy to score political points against the federal government, after telling young people in the state not to get the AstraZeneca jab.

On Q&A she again voiced her concerns about younger Australians taking the jab and again slammed the federal government for supply issues — which drew a heated response from NSW Liberal MP Jason Falinski.

“If the Federal Government had organised enough supply way back in July last year, we would not be in this situation today,” Ms Palaszczuk said.

“There could have been adequate supply of Pfizer and Moderna and instead we are at the situation where we are days away from running out of Pfizer.

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“We have to utilise our Pfizer for second doses. And we were ramping up our vaccinations in Queensland. So we are very concerned about this. But it is fundamentally a supply issue from the Federal Government.”

Mr Falinski said the Premier’s response was “simply shameless”.

“Of course there’s a problem with supply of Pfizer,” he said. “The US under Joe Biden wouldn’t let Pfizer be exported until very recently.

“The Premier of Queensland received 55,000 doses last month of June. Her government will be receiving 95,000 doses this week. And it will ramp up to 127,000 doses by the week at the end of August.

“It is just simply shameless for a state Premier to be blaming the federal government. All you have done for the last eight years has blamed the federal government for your own problems created by your own government and it is shameless.”

“You have enough supply. For you to go on national television and blame the Federal Government for your inability to deliver vaccines to the people of Queensland is shameless and it’s beyond me that a responsible Premier would do that.”

When will Australia open up?

The panel also discussed when Australia will be able to resume normal life.

Infectious diseases expert Michelle Ananda-Rajah said she thinks at least 80 per cent of the population would have to be vaccinated before that could happen — and we might need another “generation” of vaccines.

“I think in order to achieve anything close to herd immunity, which is proving harder and harder because we’re dealing with these highly contagious variants,” she said.

“The Delta variant for can infect 5 to six people and generally speaking when you have more contagious variants you need to have much broader and much higher vaccine coverage.

“It makes sense, right, in order to keep this thing out. I don’t know that we’re going to achieve herd immunity with this generation of vaccines but it is definitely something we could aim for with the next generation of vaccines as well.

“The main thing, though, is that we need, we need massive uptake with the population. Virtually every adult that can be vaccinated should be. And we also need to vaccinate children. That is the key.

“We have seen what has happened in other jurisdictions and you don’t vaccinate children. There are massive outbreaks in schools and that’s happened in Singapore, it’s happened in Israel and happened in the US. Hence these jurisdictions they are now vaccinating children.”