More than a dozen Queensland Covid-19 testing clinics were unexpectedly closed on Tuesday, creating chaos and waiting times of up to seven hours at other sites.
In the 24 hours to 7pm on Monday, Queensland recorded 5,699 new Covid cases, another daily record and up by more than 1,000 on the previous day.
The state’s chief health officer said he expected total cases “in the hundreds of thousands, if not more” by the end of the month, as the highly infectious Omicron variant circulates.
Testing sites were thrown into chaos as people arrived to find private clinics shuttered, despite the Queensland Health website showing they were open.
The health minister, Yvette D’ath, said 17 private pathology sites were initially shown as reopening on Tuesday, but had not done so.
In some cases, that was due to staffing issues at those facilities.
Several people who contacted Guardian Australia said there had been confusion at those sites around the scheduled opening time. People then flocked to public testing sites, where wait times of up to seven hours were estimated.
People were turned away from an open drive-through testing site at Murrarie due to traffic congestion.
“There [are] very long lines at our testing clinics across the state,” D’ath said.
“This is happening across the country. We are as prepared as we can be.
“We can’t direct a public pathologist to open up, we can’t force their staff to go to work if they’re positive, we just can’t ask that.
“We are seeing lines all over the country of people trying to get tests, [and] we know there is not sufficient supply of rapid antigen tests at the moment.”
On Tuesday, authorities confirmed the outbreak had spread to Aboriginal communities at Northern Peninsula, Woorabinda and Mornington Island in addition to growing outbreaks at Cherbourg and Palm Island.
The state’s chief health officer, John Gerrard, said that of the more than 25,000 active cases in Queensland only 11 people were in intensive care, with two on ventilators.
“We know there are going to be more than that,” Gerrard said.
“The percentage of tests that are coming back positive has increased substantially in the past few days, [and] this suggests there are more people in the community with Covid-19 yet to be picked up.
“This is a clearly very contagious virus, but the news so far, the good news, is we still as of last night only had 11 patients in intensive care.
“The disease we’re seeing at the moment bears no resemblance to the disease we saw last year, both here and overseas – largely because of vaccination but also because [of the Omicron variant].
“The number of cases we’re expecting to see through January will be very high. Certainly in the hundreds of thousands, if not more in Queensland.”
