Queensland is poised to surpass 2,000 COVID deaths as the state's Chief Health Officer John Gerrard foreshadows a "traffic light system" to warn the public of virus waves moving forward.
With Queensland's third Omicron wave dissipating, Dr Gerrard said the community could not remain at a heightened level of vigilance forever.
"People are tired," he said.
"We cannot continue to treat this as an emergency. It just doesn't work. They'll just stop listening.
"We need a different way of thinking about it, a different way of approaching our messaging about this pandemic."
Dr Gerrard said Queensland Health was working on a COVID traffic light system to create red, amber, and green levels of alert.
Under the new system, Queenslanders would be advised when they should consider ramping up personal protective measures, such as wearing masks indoors, or when they could "perhaps relax a little bit".
"The future is not with directions and mandates and legal enforcement," Dr Gerrard said.
"The future is with people modifying their behaviour naturally, particularly when we see waves of transmission occurring.
"We would expect, hope, that people's behaviour will change. When it's red, we will be suggesting that everyone wear masks in indoor crowded environments.
"In green, it might be, for example, that we just wear them in general practitioner waiting rooms."
Queensland recorded 16 COVID deaths yesterday, taking the state's total to 1,985.
The Sunshine State is expected to surpass 2,000 deaths on Friday or at the weekend, doubling the number of Queenslanders who have lost their lives to COVID in a little over three months.
Traffic light system
There were 308 patients in hospital with the virus yesterday and 2,033 new COVID cases were notified to health authorities — a level of transmission Dr Gerrard said would rate as "green" under the proposed traffic light system.
COVID is on track to be one of the state's top three leading causes of death for 2022, along with heart disease and dementia.
"It's a disaster, make no mistake about that," Dr Gerrard said.
"We are under no illusions — 2,000 deaths are terrible.
"The fact that 2,000 people have died does weigh heavily. That's the hardest part of the job. Our thoughts are with the friends and family of those who have died."
He said that without COVID vaccines, many more people would have died — both as a direct result of the virus and indirectly due to increased stress on the health care system.
"It would have been an absolute catastrophe," Dr Gerrard said.
"Our hospital system would clearly have been overwhelmed and this would have had a knock-on impact across the board.
"If the hospital system is overwhelmed, that affects everybody, not just people with COVID. So, if the hospital system is overwhelmed and you get a heart attack, then that's a problem.
"We are doing amazingly well compared to other states and other countries. That's a testament to what Queenslanders have done, it really is. That's not just a line, that's true."
Queensland Health data showed that as of August 29, of the state's COVID deaths, 960 were in aged care residents.
Boosters effective
James Cook University professor of infectious disease modelling and epidemiology Emma McBryde said COVID deaths were over-represented in people who "had received their two doses of vaccine but haven't had a booster".
In Queenslanders aged over 65, data shows only 68.53 per cent have had four COVID jabs and 93.48 per cent have received three doses.
People aged 65 or older, not including those in residential aged care facilities, who were infected during the third wave were twice as likely to be hospitalised if they had not had their fourth dose in the four months prior.
They were also twice as likely to die with COVID-19.
Professor McBryde welcomed the development of a traffic light system to warn Queenslanders when they should take increased precautions against infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
"I think we do need to be able to reduce and increase our vigilance according to how the virus is behaving," she said.
"When we are in the middle of a highly exponential phase of growth of cases, then we need to behave with greater mask use and more activities like working from home.
"I think it's great to have a traffic light system. But I would say to people that mask use works and keep wearing your mask if you are vulnerable."
Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital infectious disease physician Krispin Hajkowicz also backed plans to introduce a traffic light warning system as "a sound idea".
"This is going to keep on happening for decades to come, and we're going to need a way of signalling," he said.
"We also can't probably stay at the very high level of restrictions that we've had for the last two years.
"Being really flexible and resilient to future waves is going to be the best option moving forward."
'Assume there will be additional waves'
Dr Hajkowicz said the coronavirus pandemic would have long-lasting effects on the delivery of healthcare.
"Hospitals are going to operate very differently in the future," he said.
"The way we manage infection control, air flow, protecting our patients from developing other viral infections, bacterial infections, is all new and different now."
Dr Hajkowicz said the RBWH, Queensland's biggest hospital, had deployed hundreds of air filters during the pandemic to reduce transmission of viruses.
He said new hospitals would be designed to incorporate improved airflow to maximise clean air.
With COVID transmission and hospital admissions clearly trending down, experts say the future remains very much uncertain.
"We just assume there will be additional waves," Dr Gerrard said.
"There is a very big opportunity around the world for new variants to emerge."
While the World Health Organization is yet to declare the pandemic over, Dr Gerrard hinted Queensland could be close to ending its COVID state of emergency, announced in late January, 2020.
"That will be a decision of the health minister, but I would expect that sometime in the next couple of months, the state of emergency would be revoked," he said.
"All of the mandates will end so we will be managing COVID along the lines of any other infectious disease sometime in the coming months, but I think we will need national agreement on this."
Dr Gerrard, who is yet to be diagnosed with COVID-19 himself, said he also expected a unified national response to long COVID moving forward.
Queensland Health Minister Yvette D'Ath announced yesterday daily reporting of COVID statistics would be wound back from this weekend.
From next week, Queensland Health will report COVID case numbers daily from Monday-Friday, with no weekend reporting.
The new traffic light system is expected to be in place "sometime in the next few weeks", with potential for it to be adopted nationwide.
