GP call to ease limits

CORONAVIRUS restrictions within Queensland should be relaxed as soon as possible as businesses demand a return to normality, the head of the Gold Coast’s GP lobby says.

Gold Coast Medical Association president Dr Philip Morris said it had been nearly three weeks since mass Black Lives Matter protests in King George Square at Brisbane and no new cases had been linked to the 30,000-strong gathering.

“It’s possible the rate of infection in Queensland was so low that you just didn’t get too many infected people spreading it in the marches.”

Dr Morris said he believed it was now safe to relax unprecedented restrictions further.

“Yes, we should be loosening restrictions, we’ve done very well. But they should be loosened one at a time and unfortunately for the businesses you need about two weeks to see if there’s any new infections. We’ve just got to do it piece by piece.”

He said Queenslanders’ response to restrictions far exceeded expectations, contributing to a drastically lower infection rate than he and other medical professionals had predicted.

As the COVID-19 crisis took shape, Dr Morris wrote some predicted “on conservative estimates, one quarter of Queenslanders are likely to be infected in the first wave”.

Queensland has recorded 1067 COVID-19 cases and two are still active, while the Coast has recorded 196 cases, with two still listed as active. In total, 347,610 tests have been conducted.

Stage Two restrictions limit venues to 20 patrons per defined area and at least 4sq m of floor space per person – with Prime Minister Scott Morrison yesterday saying national medical advice was to half that to one patron per 2sq m for smaller venues. In NSW, rules vary depending on venue type, but the capacity of restaurants and cafes must not exceed 50 customers or one customer per 4sq m.

While calling for relaxation, Dr Morris stopped short of calling for a complete lifting of the COVID-19 measures.

“It’s unclear for how long the application of intense suppression methods is needed, but overseas experience suggests between one to three months,” Dr Morris said.

“Part of it is because we haven’t had the huge influx of people from overseas early in the course of the disease.

“Although Brisbane Airport is a national airport, it’s just nowhere near the volumes of people coming from overseas that Melbourne and Sydney get. We didn’t have the big cruise ships coming in at the crucial time Sydney did.

“The other thing is we moved to suppression mode of the response pretty quickly,” he said.