Chief Health Officer Dr John Gerrard said that there had not been a huge increase in deaths.

He said that in addition to the 12 new deaths in the past 24 hours, a further 27 were lives lost going back to mid January and which had just been notified by the Department of Births, Deaths and Marriages.

“I really must emphasise, this does not mean there has been a big increase in deaths. There has not been,” Gerrard said on Thursday.

“In fact the data clearly shows the number of deaths from Covid-19 have been falling steadily from the last week of January as we passed the peak. That is a critical piece of information,”  Gerrard pointed out.

“Most of these cases did occur several weeks ago and it does not indicate a sudden peak in deaths.”

Gerrard said that for reasons of transparency, all people who died with Covid-19 were included in statistics, regardless of other co-morbidities unless it was something obvious, like a car accident, which had caused death.

“In the interests of public disclosure we have adopted an approach whereby we report deaths as soon as they are reported to us from a wide variety of direct sources,” he said.

Gerrard said that in addition to this, each week a report from Births, Deaths and Marriages was received which includes everyone who has died with a recent positive Covid-19 test and these reports go back four to five weeks.

In announcing the pandemic’s death toll, Gerrard, said it was difficult.

“Standing here each day and reporting on (Covid-19 deaths) is without doubt the most difficult part of this job,” Gerrard said.

“It is however critically important, I believe, that Queenslanders have a full understanding of the picture associated with this pandemic.”

He said the 39 deaths include one person in their 50s, five in their 60s, 10 in their 70s, 12 in their 80s, 10 in their 90s and one person over 100.

Gerrard said the total death toll in Queensland since the pandemic began was now 438, 229 of them in aged care facilities.

On Thursday, the State recorded 5665 new positive cases of Covid-19, which is down from 6596 on Wednesday.

In good news, the hospitalisation rates continue to “drop dramatically”.

Gerrard said that on Thursday there were 382 people in public hospitals with Covid-19, down from 404 on Wednesday, 462 on Tuesday and 484 on Monday.

And he said the number of positive tests in school children was also declining, now sitting at 1668 in the past 24 hours compared to 1905 on the previous day.

It comes as the State Government continues to face sustained criticism and questioning over their role in helping to fund the privately-built Wellcamp quarantine facility near Toowoomba.

After refusing on Wednesday to release any figures at all, claiming commercial-in-confidence arrangements with the Wagner Corporation, it has now been revealed the capital costs of the 1000-bed facility are $48.8million.

The Wagners agreed late in the day to release that figure.

But the amount which the State Government is stumping up for a 12-month lease of the complex remains secret.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk says that if the Commonwealth agrees to release the cost of the Federally-funded Pinkenba facility she will follow suit.

Health Minister Yvette D’Ath, fronting the media to announce the Thursday figures, faced another barrage of questions about the dollars and pledged “Wellcamp is not going to go to waste”.

This is despite the fact that international borders are now open and vaccinated arrivals are not required to quarantine.

D’Ath said the Wagners had paid for the facility and the State had put money towards it, as happened in many infrastructure projects.

D’Ath dodged further questions on money and instead focussed her wrath on the Federal Government.

“it is pretty clear it is going to cost half of what Pinkenba is going to cost … I think it is a very very good investment,” D’Ath said, adding that instead of playing politics the Morrison Government should have stumped up for the centre as well.

“We have waited for two years for them to get off their backsides to handle hotel quarantine and manage isolation and they have done nothing … our only regret is that the Commonwealth didn’t’ partner with us over 18 months ago to build these facilities. We may have avoided major outbreaks in hotel quarantine,” D’Ath said.

The number of new coronavirus cases globally fell by 19 per cent in the last week while the number of deaths remained stable, according to the World Health Organisation.

The UN health agency said late on Tuesday in its weekly report on the pandemic that just over 16 million new Covid-19 infections and about 75,000 deaths were reported worldwide last week.

The Western Pacific was the only region to report a rise in new weekly cases, an increase of about 19 per cent, Southeast Asia reported a decrease of about 37 per cent, the biggest drop globally.