Queensland's third wave of COVID-19 has now outgrown the second with daily hospitalisations, and authorities expect the number of cases will keep climbing as winter continues.
At the weekend, the number of people with the virus in hospital reached 640 – the highest since February, Queensland's first wave, and overtaking the second wave in April.
That number has now fallen to 598 – still more than double the 286 people that were in hospital a month ago.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said yesterday she expected hospitalisations would continue to rise.
"We do expect those numbers to increase, not decrease," Ms Palaszczuk said.
"We are in winter, it does spread more rapidly in winter."
Queensland Health reported on Tuesday that hospital numbers had surged in the latest reporting period, rising to 710.
Eleven deaths from COVID were also recorded in the same period, taking Queensland's total to 1,281.
Director of infectious diseases at Mater Health Services, Paul Griffin, said people should be taking this wave of coronavirus incredibly seriously.
"It's really clear that we are seeing another very significant wave at the moment, largely due to the emergence of these more infectious sub variants, BA.4 and BA.5," he said.
"There's no ceiling really to where this wave could be, relative to what we've seen previously, because so many people that have been protected from past infection now really aren't against these new sub variants.
"We need people to understand that this is very significant and, and just take some of those simple steps, so we don't see a wave that exceeds what we've seen before."
Hospitalisations now the key measurement
COVID numbers are now being reported with a focus on hospitalisations rather than daily cases.
Dr Griffin said this illustrated the burden on the state.
"We probably are only finding a small proportion of the real cases out there… so we probably don't need to focus on the case numbers so much, and the important metric is hospitalisations and intensive care utilisation," he said.
"There's a finite amount of space for that, and if we're approaching the limit of that, then we are in in big trouble."
About 1,600 Queensland Health staff are currently absent with COVID-19 or the flu, which the Premier said was "putting some extra strain on our hospitals"
Don't be complacent
Dr Griffin said people who had recently contracted COVID-19 weren't fully protected from the new strains.
"What we do see is reduced protection from recent infection," he said.
"If people are assuming they're safe, because they've been recently infected with COVID, that's much less likely to be the case now."
He said simple COVID-hygiene measures remained important, especially in the winter.
"The colder conditions are more conducive to the transmission of these sorts of viruses, as we do tend to be indoors and we do tend to have less ventilation, a little bit more close contact," he said.
"Those simple things, social distancing hand hygiene, mask wearing."
The state government has confirmed it will not reintroduce a mask mandate, despite "increasingly pressure" nationally.
But, "there are discussions about urging people in certain situations to wear masks," Ms Palaszczuk said.
"Strongly urging is probably not going to be sufficient," Dr Griffin said.
"We actually need a really good campaign to educate.
"If more people knew that, while they're not perfect, [masks] do contribute very significantly to reducing risk, particularly if combined with a comprehensive strategy, including being up to date with your vaccines, then hopefully, more people would want to wear them on a voluntary basis.
"We should look at better ways of facilitating mask wearing maybe supplying them at higher risk venues so that they're there and they're readily accessible.
