Travellers should be ‘confident’ to fly to Queensland for Easter: Premier

The borders were closed after small outbreaks in Perth and Melbourne and a 42-day border closure with greater Sydney ended on February 1, following the northern beaches outbreak in the lead-up to Christmas.

“I think people should be confident to be able to book their flights because at the moment we have zero community transmission,” Ms Palaszczuk said.

“From what I see, people are out there enjoying the Queensland lifestyle and hopefully that will be the case for many months to come.

“But of course we still have to be on our guard because we have this South African strain, the South American strain and UK strain, so that is why our hotel quarantine is really important.”

Queensland removed all interstate border restrictions on February 27.

The only time Queensland had no interstate restrictions since the borders were first closed in March 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic reached Australia, was for nine days in December.

Queensland Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young last week said the rollout of the vaccine would “massively change” the way that state managed lockdowns and border closures.

Dr Young said once all people categorised in phase 1a of the rollout had received vaccines, the need for border closures would be reduced dramatically.

According to Queensland’s rollout strategy, the people most at risk of spreading the virus – health staff treating positive patients and quarantine workers – would be jabbed first.

Those 37,000 were expected to receive their first dose of the Pfizer vaccine by the start of April, depending on supply from the federal government.

Ms Palaszczuk said she was “very happy with the rollout, we are reaching our targets”.

“We did 980 yesterday, which was great. We have done 3010 so far, so we have exceeded our target [of 1000 vaccinations] within the first week and we remain on target for our second week.”

Four people tested positive for COVID-19 in hotel quarantine in Queensland on Tuesday and no local cases were detected, Ms Palaszczuk said.

The state has 14 active cases.