Chief Health Officer Dr John Gerrard (Photo: Qld Health)

January 6, 2022

There have been 10,332 cases of COVID-19 added to the Queensland tally during the latest reporting period but Chief Health Officer Dr John Gerrard has admitted there are many more people with the disease.

“We know this is a gross underestimate of the true number because as we know many patients are doing their own RAT tests at home, some people will have very mild illness and won’t even recognise that they have COVID-19 and some patients won’t be able to access testing, unfortunately,” Dr Gerrard said.

He said there were now 42,250 active cases in Queensland, including 12 people in ICU with two on ventilators.

Dr Gerrard said the ICU numbers gave “some cause for hope cautiously” there had not been a major escalation of intensive care admissions yet.

However, the number of patients in hospital wards receiving “intermediate” treatment for COVID-19 was increasing steadily.

There are currently 284 patients in hospital requiring treatment, and he expected this number to increase “very substantially” over the next two weeks.

There were also 19,299 people receiving care at home.

Dr Gerrard said the COVID death toll in Queensland had risen to eight with the confirmation by the Coroner that a man in his early 80s who died on December 27 had died of COVID-19.

Cherbourg Local Disaster Management Group has reported there is now a total of about 123 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Cherbourg and Murgon.

The figures, released at midday on Thursday, show 105 cases in Cherbourg.

* * * 

southburnett.com.au has been keeping track of some basic statistics for local Council areas since the re-opening of the State border on December 13.

These statistics, from Queensland Health, show the total number of confirmed positive cases per Local Government Area since the pandemic began in January 2020.

They are NOT the total of current ACTIVE cases but demonstrate how the virus has spread quickly throughout the local community.

We took snapshots on Dec 13, Dec 21 and daily since December 29.

The latest figures are current to 7:00pm on Wednesday (Jan 5):

  • South Burnett: 3 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 18 / 21 / 25 / 39 / 52 / 83 / 135
  • Cherbourg:  – / – / – / 3 / 12 / 21 / 30 / 51 / 61 / 71 / 74
  • Toowoomba: 52 / 56 / 233 / 312 / 368 / 396 / 463 / 579 / 665 / 751 / 841
  • Gympie: 7 / 6 / 23 / 26 / 38 / 43 / 48 / 68 / 82 / 104 / 144
  • North Burnett: 3 / 3 / 5 / 5 / 8 / 9 / 13 / 13 / 14 / 14 / 17
  • Somerset: 6 / 6 / 14 / 15 / 15 / 20 / 28 / 34 / 38 / 48 / 64
  • Western Downs: 3 / 3 / 16 / 18 / 23 / 30 / 36 / 48 / 52 / 60 / 89

NB. Data is reported by Queensland Health daily but can vary over time due to case reviews. When we took the first snapshots, Cherbourg LGA had not been added to the list by Qld Health as no cases had been recorded there. From December 31, data is current to 7:00pm the previous day.

Related articles: