Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk

January 9, 2022

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has announced changes to the 2022 school year to avoid the start of Term 1 clashing with the projected peak of the Omicron wave of COVID-19 in the State.

Speaking at a media briefing on Sunday morning, the Premier said Prep to Year 10 students would resume school on February 7 instead of January 24.

Years 11 and 12 students would start remote learning from January 31.

Vulnerable children or the children of essential workers would be allowed to attend school under similar arrangements from previous closures, with a skeleton staff on site for supervision.

The Premier also announced the end of the school year would be pushed back a week, from December 9 to December 16.

This move has not been supported by the Queensland Teachers’ Union or the Independent Education Union (Qld & NT) which covers workers in most non-government schools.

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Chief Health Officer Dr John Gerrard said exactly 18,000 new cases of COVID-19 had been added in Queensland during the last period, including 4320 self-reported rapid antigen test results recorded via the Queensland Health website

He said there were “nominally” 80,563 active cases in Queensland “but we know it is substantially more”.

Dr Gerrard said the figures were what he expected, and what were necessary for the virus to ultimately become endemic in the community.

“But the next few weeks will be a challenge, particularly on our health care system,” he said.

Dr Gerrard said there were 380 people currently in hospital requiring treatment for COVID-19 as well as 22 people in ICU, including five patients on ventilators.

A total of 24,919 people were receiving COVID care at home.

Dr Gerrard said he had an important message for the community and the healthcare sector.

“The projections are that the number of people accessing health care in the hospital system will escalate substantially from about a week from now,” Dr Gerrard said.

“And it will continue to rise up until the beginning of February.”

He urged anyone who was eligible to get a booster shot to do so immediately.

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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 Saturday (Jan 8):

  • South Burnett: 3 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 18 / 21 / 25 / 39 / 52 / 83 / 135 / 188 / 213 / 239
  • Cherbourg:  – / – / – / 3 / 12 / 21 / 30 / 51 / 61 / 71 / 74 / 89 / 96 / 96
  • Toowoomba: 52 / 56 / 233 / 312 / 368 / 396 / 463 / 579 / 665 / 751 / 841 / 940 / 1141 / 1315
  • Gympie: 7 / 6 / 23 / 26 / 38 / 43 / 48 / 68 / 82 / 104 / 144 / 169 / 222 / 243
  • North Burnett: 3 / 3 / 5 / 5 / 8 / 9 / 13 / 13 / 14 / 14 / 17 / 21 / 23 / 27
  • Somerset: 6 / 6 / 14 / 15 / 15 / 20 / 28 / 34 / 38 / 48 / 64 / 104 / 127 / 160
  • Western Downs: 3 / 3 / 16 / 18 / 23 / 30 / 36 / 48 / 52 / 60 / 89 / 114 / 140 / 203

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.

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