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Premier spells out the things you won’t be able to do without the jab

The Queensland premier is considering restrictions on unvaccinated people among other options as the state prepares to ease restrictions for people fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

Nov 05, 2021, updated Nov 05, 2021
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk is hinting at restrictions on unvaccinated Queenslanders. (AAP Image/Jono Searle)

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk is hinting at restrictions on unvaccinated Queenslanders. (AAP Image/Jono Searle)

Annastacia Palaszczuk said such decisions were currently up to individual business, but public health orders restricting unvaccinated people, such as those in NSW and Victoria, could be issued in future.

“What we will see in the future across Australia may be, until the vaccination levels are consistent across the nation, you will see some measures we’ll put in that only vaccinated people will go be able to go to certain venues,” she told reporters on Friday.

“You’re seeing that in New South Wales and Victoria at the moment.

“I don’t want to pre-empt what’s happening in Queensland but you could see businesses do that, you could see large festivals for example saying to young people: ‘You can only come here if you are vaccinated’.

“So it’s in everyone’s interest to get vaccinated.”

Palaszczuk said the government could consider public health orders restricting unvaccinated people from certain venues and premises in coming months.

Her comments came as the state recorded no new locally acquired cases of COVID-19 on Friday, a day after two women and a teenager, only one of whom had had one jab, were recorded as cases.

They had recently visited the northern NSW town of Moree, where an outbreak has grown to at least 33 cases.

Queensland cut the Moree Plains Shire from its border bubble and will further restrict cross-border travel exemptions to only certain “essential purposes” for the next seven days.

“We will try and get supplies to those communities in NSW rather than having to cross to get supplies into Queensland,” Ms Palaszczuk said.

The premier said hospital and aged care visitors would be banned from those facilities in Goondiwindi this weekend as well as a precaution.

The town is unlikely to be locked down due to high vaccination rates, with 90.9 per cent of eligible Goondiwindi residents having had one jab and 81.5 per cent fully vaccinated.

Overall, 65.81 per cent of eligible Queenslanders are fully vaccinated, and 78.81 per cent have had one dose.

However, Indigenous vaccination rates are lagging in the state with 52 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people aged over 16 having had one jab and 38.9 per cent are fully vaccinated.

The government has put down low Indigenous vaccination rates down to misinformation on social media, but Liberal National Party leader David Crisafulli said more needed to be done.

He called for the government to improve access to vaccines and to go into Indigenous communities to spruik the jab.

“We’ve got to give people the confidence to get the jab and I’ve seen some of the nonsense that’s on social media and it’s running through these Indigenous communities,” he said.

Meanwhile, a traveller from Cairns could be the source of the Northern Territory’s first community transmission of COVID-19, as a second case is diagnosed in the Top End.

Health workers are racing to find additional contacts, with a three-day lockdown in Katherine and lockout in Greater Darwin scheduled until midnight on Sunday.

The new case is housemate of an unvaccinated man in his 20s who was diagnosed in Katherine, 320km south of Darwin, on Thursday.

Chief Minister Michael Gunner says that man stayed at the Mantra Hotel in Darwin with a traveller from north Queensland after visiting the Monsoons pub and nightclub.

The person has since been placed in quarantine.

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