Professor Nigel McMillan from Menzies Health Institute says people are not taking COVID seriously enough and he's calling for a mask mandate at large public events. It comes as 18 deaths from COVID are reported today in Queensland.
A Queensland infectious diseases expert says COVID is on track to overtake heart disease as the number one cause of death in Australia, with one in every 110 Queenslanders currently infected with the virus.COVID hospitalisations have reached an unprecedented high in QueenslandIt comes as 18 deaths and 9,992 new COVID cases were confirmed in Queensland in the latest reporting period.
"It will outpace cardiac coronary heart disease by the end of the year if we keep going at this rate," he said. "This virus is really giving us conniptions as a scientific and medical community because we're seeing it becoming much more infectious, but certainly it has not dropped in terms of its ability to cause disease."
He said the Ekka will pose a significant risk of COVID-19 spreading among the hundreds of thousands of attendees.
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