An influx of COVID-19 patients from Papua New Guinea has contributed to Cairns Hospital declaring its first Code Yellow in more than 18 months.
Queensland is speeding up vaccinations in the Torres Strait in response to the outbreak in PNG, with the progressive roll out expected to begin later this week.
More than 260 people presented at the Cairns emergency department on Tuesday, with road crash victims adding to increased pressure on services.
"A sustained high number of presentations to the ED, alongside a spike in trauma admissions and several patients needing isolation for COVID-19 had led to the hospital declaring a Code Yellow," the hospital said in a statement on Wednesday.
It has six patients with COVID-19 in isolation, all of whom travelled from PNG.
"All patients were detected with the virus in hotel quarantine, and transferred to the hospital as per usual processes, to prevent any risk of community infection," executive director of medical services Don Mackie said.
He is confident the hospital will be able to cope with the increased demand in the short term, but said some elective surgery has been postponed.
"We are balancing our COVID-19 pandemic response with the continued delivery of essential health services, but we are asking Far North Queenslanders to please keep our EDs for emergencies only," he said.
The government first flagged plans for a sped up vaccination roll out for a number of islands neighbouring PNG last week.
"It's only a matter of kilometres, and there's a lot of trade and commerce that usually happens, and we are seeing more and more cases, unfortunately, in Papua New Guinea," Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said on Friday.
Queensland had vaccinated almost 12,000 health and hotel quarantine workers as of Wednesday morning.
The state recorded five new cases in hotel quarantine overnight, bringing the total number of active cases to 37.
