Everyone is prepared, just as in New South Wales and Victoria. We now have to live with the virus and we have heard from our acting chief health officer yesterday that there will be cases. We have to prepare for that.
It will be a different mind set for Queenslanders because we’re used to hearing zero, zero, time and time again. People haven’t seen their families for some months, if not years and Christmas is a time for families to reunite. I have spoken to grandparents who will see their grandchildren for the very first time. That will be very memorable.
This is the right thing to do, as Australia opens up. We have to be mindful that we are in a pandemic and there’s many Queenslanders that have gone about their jobs, people have gone to school. We haven’t had the long lock downs that you’ve experienced in Melbourne and Sydney and we want to keep it that way. I never thought we would get to a situation where we have, coming into opening up for a pandemic, 80% double dose.
This is a very high vaccination rate. We are the 90% first dose. We want that additional protection to make sure people get the test on day five.