Qld Government asks PM to halve international arrivals

The Queensland Premier has called on the Federal Government to halve the number of international arrivals into the state.

Annastacia Palaszczuk revealed she had written to the Prime Minister overnight about her request, which comes after the sunshine state recorded another case of community transmission of COVID-19 on Saturday.

“I’m asking the Prime Minister to halve our number of overseas returning travellers,” Ms Palaszczuk said.

Currently, there are about 1300 international travellers touching down in Queensland each week, with most of the state’s active cases from returned travellers.

“Basically, every day over the last fortnight, we have been seeing five or six cases,” she said.

“We are just asking for the next two weeks, while we get everything under control, that we half the number of our international overseas arrivals”.

Last night I wrote to the Prime Minister requesting to halve the number of international travellers coming to Queensland for the next two weeks while we focus on contact tracing. #covid19

— Annastacia Palaszczuk (@AnnastaciaMP) March 27, 2021

Ms Palaszczuk said she believes this is “very important” for two reasons.

“The first reason is we want to be able to concentrate on the contact tracing, and secondly we are seeing large numbers of positive cases that are coming in,” she said.

The Premier has also revealed that the state’s hospitals are almost at the same capacity as they were during the height of the padenmic last year.

“That is not to say our hospitals cannot cope, they will be able to cope, but this is a large influx that we are seeing, and the high rate of people coming back are returned travellers testing positive.”

Queensland recorded one new local COVID-19 case on Saturday, with five returned travellers also testing positive in hotel quarantine.

There are now 71 active cases across the state.