Queenslanders may be sick of hearing about COVID-19 and want to pretend it has gone, but the virus is still killing dozens across the state each week, a frontline doctor warns.
Dr Aletia Johnson — a GP at Grange Road Medical Centre in Ipswich, west of Brisbane — is urging the state government to widen mask mandates and offer vaccination at primary schools.
"The kids are the ones who are spreading this. Kids are wonderful but their immune systems haven't fully developed yet," Dr Johnson said.
And the number of Queensland children who are double-vaccinated remains stubbornly low: Fewer than 32 per cent of those aged between five and 11 years have had two doses, according to federal government data.
"They're spreading it to their parents. They're spreading it to the day-care workers. They're spreading it to their grandparents," Dr Johnson said.
"Nobody likes having a needle. Nobody likes having two needles — but, if it's a choice between that and killing your grandma, I know what I'd choose."
Masks 'strongly advised' at school
So far this month, COVID-19 has claimed 146 lives in Queensland alone.
Dr Johnson said that children should be able to get COVID-19 and flu shots at school, "just like when we vaccinate kids for cervical cancer and hepatitis", to make life easier for busy parents.
However, she stressed, the injections should be voluntary.
The state government is "strongly advising" students and teachers to wear masks.
However, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has resisted extending mandates beyond healthcare settings, aged care, public transport and for air travel.
"[There is] a big onus on personal responsibility, but I know Queenslanders out there will step up," Ms Palaszczuk told reporters on Monday, as she revealed COVID-19 and flu hospital admissions had risen to 967.
Health Minister Yvette D'Ath said that number was "one and a half times" the capacity of the Sunshine Coast University Hospital.
Adding to the pressure, the percentage of frontline healthcare staff off sick was at least twice the norm.
"We are averaging between 6 and 7 per cent," Ms D'ath said.
When it comes to masks, Dr Johnson said "strongly advised" was not good enough.
"I'm a doctor but I'm also a person and, like everybody else, unless somebody tells me I have to do something, I'm not going to do it," she said.
In the past 24 hours some Brisbane private schools have asked staff and students to wear masks while indoors.
But Australian Medical Association Queensland President Dr Maria Boulton said not many Queenslanders were following mask recommendations.
"I went to a large shopping centre a few weeks ago, and there were only two people wearing a mask, and that was me and my daughter," Dr Boulton said.
"There were hundreds of people there"
Dr Johnson said COVID-19 was not the only thing keeping people under the weather.
She said that, if your rapid antigen test (RAT) result was negative but you have symptoms, you should stay home: chances are it was another — potentially deadly — virus.
"It's like there's a plague out there. It's germ soup," Dr Johnson said.
"There's others that we don't have vaccines for — there's one called respiratory syncytial virus or RSV, there's human metapneumovirus, there's rhinovirus, and there's para-influenza.
"It might be just a common cold if a young healthy person catches it, or the sniffles if a child catches it.
"But, if that person spreads it to someone who's vulnerable, someone who's got a suppressed immune system, someone's who's older, that person could end up in hospital. That person could even die.
Ventilation numbers lagging
Schools are a hotbed of infection, and Queensland's Education Department is trying to improve ventilation in classrooms to reduce transmission.
To date, it has only looked at a small fraction of state schools.
As of Friday, according to government figures, just 46 of 1,258 state schools have had ventilation assessments.
This term, 43 schools are scheduled to be assessed, and six more assessments have been requested.
"The department has purchased 250 air purifiers and located these across the state for installation in school learning spaces to supplement natural and mechanical ventilation," a spokesperson for the Education Department said.
Dr Johnson said curbing the spread of illnesses among children was key to limiting transmission in the broader community.
"Kids are really the ones that we need to do the most work with," she said.
The fear of catching COVID-19 has kept some of Dr Johnson's older patients housebound for months.
"They're terrified [that,] if they go out, they'll get COVID, and the truth is they're not wrong," she said.
"We need to make sure that we can protect as many people as we can so that we lose as few Queenslanders as we can this year."
