Man from Papua New Guinea dies of coronavirus in Queensland

A man has died from COVID-19 in a Queensland hospital after first being diagnosed in Papua New Guinea.

The dual Papuan-British national was evacuated to Queensland on March 28.

Since that day, the 77-year-old has been in intensive care in Redcliffe Hospital and died “from complications due to COVID-19” on Monday, Queensland Health said.

As the man was not diagnosed in Australia, he will not be counted in Queensland’s official death toll, which stands at 6.

A person has not died of the virus in Queensland since April 18.

Three people, including a returned overseas traveller in his 40s, are currently in intensive care with the virus in Australia.

Meanwhile the relationship between Queensland and the Commonwealth continues to deteriorate over the vaccine rollout following accusations of diversionary tactics and childish behaviour.

Opposition leader David Crisafulli says comments by Deputy Premier Steven Miles are “an embarrassment to every Queenslander” and have offended federal health minister Greg Hunt.

“He personally felt very offended by the language of the deputy premier yesterday,” Mr Crisafulli said on Tuesday.

“It was childish and it has got to stop. The behaviour that we saw yesterday was not fitting of his office.”

Mr Miles on Monday said Prime Minister Scott Morrison was trying to use the vaccine rollout and the COVID pandemic generally to distract from problems within the government.

“That’s been a very orchestrated campaign over the last few days to try to stop you all talking about Brittany Higgins and rape and sexual harassment and all of the things that have happened in Canberra,” he told reporters.

“They were in fact so eager to distract everybody from those topics that they put at risk confidence in their own vaccine rollout program.”

As Mr Crisafulli called for an end to childish behaviour, opposition health spokeswoman Ros Bates labelled the deputy premier a “phony”.

“Steven Miles is a fraud, a phony and a failure,” she said.

“If Annastacia Palaszczuk wasn’t the weakest premier she should have sacked him when he was the health minister.”

The opposition is concerned with the speed of the state’s vaccine rollout, particularly the number of jabs on weekends.

“To have revelations that Victoria (is) delivering over eight times more vaccines over the course of the last month on weekends is a concern,” Mr Crisafulli said.

“COVID is important, vaccine rollouts are not a Monday to Friday exercise.”

He said there has been poor behaviour and problems with the vaccine rollout at both levels of government,

“I’m not going to come here and defend Canberra, because they’ve got their own issues to work out and they’ve got to get cracking on the vaccine as well,” he said.

No new locally-acquired cases of COVID-19 were recorded in Queensland for a third consecutive day.

There were also no new cases among returned travellers.