Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk insists she is still following the national COVID-19 plan after revealing she may not open the state borders once vaccination coverage reaches 80 per cent.
Queensland is close to suppressing a third multi-case outbreak of the Delta variant, three months after recording no new locally-acquired cases after 12,829 tests on Wednesday.
The news comes nine days after the first case emerged in a cluster involving workers at an aviation company, which swelled to nine cases.
"So we have zero community cases, this is unbelievable," Ms Palaszczuk told reporters on Wednesday.
"This is great effort from everyone in Queensland doing the right thing."
The premier said there was ongoing risk of the Delta getting into the state so it is crucial for people to keep getting vaccinated.
She said vaccination coverage in parts of Brisbane is already above 70 per cent, but she is particularly concerned about lagging vaccination rates in Ipswich, Beaudesert, Logan, the Sunshine Coast and central Queensland.
Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young said it won't be long until the virus finds its way into Queensland.
"We will see Delta variant come in and won't be able to be controlled, the only control will be the number of people who are vaccinated," she said.
Queensland still has among the lowest vaccination coverage in the country, vying with Western Australia to be the last state to reach 80 per cent coverage.
Creating further uncertainty for people unable to visit, or be visited by, friends and relatives interstate, Ms Palaszczuk said the borders wouldn't necessarily open when the 80 per cent target it met.
The premier said booster shots, protecting children and dealing with hospital capacity issues were all part of the national reopening plan.
She strongly denied she was shifting the goalposts or deviating from the national plan.
"That's not correct, no, don't put words in my mouth, that's not exactly what I was saying, though, I said very clearly, we're in stage A of the national plan, we are following that national plan," the premier said.
"Part of that national plan is booster shots, so ask the prime minister the plan for the booster shots, because that's in the plan as well.
"So, you know, don't just cherry pick parts of the national plan, when you're not cherry picking other parts of the national plan."
She said national cabinet was still awaiting more research and modelling from the Doherty Institute and that was due back in coming weeks.
National cabinet, she said, should publicly release all the work it is doing for the sake of transparency.
"It would be great for that to be publicly released so the public can see it all as well as the state leaders," the premier said.
Ms Palaszczuk said her immediate priority was trying to lift vaccination coverage so that it was rates were level in different geographical areas.
She said the target was 80 per cent, but the ACT has reached 93 per cent already so 80 per cent shouldn't be the final goal.
"To protect Queenslanders I would like to see as many Queenslanders as possible vaccinated, which would reduce our risks if and when we get those outbreaks," she added.
The debate on reopening comes a day after the state government extended the Queensland public health emergency declaration to December 26.
