A Queensland infectious diseases expert says COVID-19 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.
It comes as 18 deaths and 9,992 new COVID cases were confirmed in Queensland in the latest reporting period.
There are 983 people with COVID-19 in Queensland hospitals, 24 of them in intensive care — the highest number of hospitalisations yet recorded.
Menzies Health Institute Queensland professor Nigel McMillan warns people are not taking the risk of the disease seriously enough.
"It will outpace cardiac coronary heart disease by the end of the year if we keep going at this rate," he told ABC Radio Brisbane.
"The case fatality rate — that is, the number of people who die per 100 — has dropped from 3 per cent to 0.1 [per cent], our medical interventions are working and people kind of consider it less serious, [but] this virus keeps changing on us.
"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."
Professor McMillan said politicians needed to find a "middle ground" between public backlash against government control and putting more pressure on the strained health system.
Ekka mask mandate call
Professor McMillan is also calling on health authorities to introduce a mask mandate for large events, such as next month's Royal Queensland Show in Brisbane.
He said the Ekka will pose a significant risk of COVID-19 spreading among the hundreds of thousands of attendees.
"Right now, our vaccines essentially are completely ineffective at preventing infections spreading from person to person.
"They do certainly have a high rate of protection for hospitalisation and death, but because we have such high numbers and, of course, while the virus is always replicating, new variants are coming along all the time."
The Ekka usually attracts about 400,000 people from across the state over the eight-day event.
"We wear seatbelts because we know that saves lives, we stop at red lights because we know that's the right thing to do [and] it's the same thing with masks."
Professor McMillan said Queenslanders also face a higher risk of contracting the flu this year after prolonged periods of reduced travel and increased isolation.
"International air travel, which usually brings the flu to us, has been restricted and new strains have come down [and] we don't really have immunity to them," he said.
