Papua New Guinea recorded 144 new cases of coronavirus on Friday, with the country’s number of known infections nearly doubling over the past 10 days.
The Pacific island nation has logged 6,619 cases and 60 deaths, the National Control Centre for COVID-19 said in a statement on Saturday.
There have been concerns that official tallies vastly underestimates the extent of the crisis as PNG does not do mass testing.
A vaccination drive that began late last month has been hampered by misinformation shared on social media to the extent that even frontline health workers are hesitant to take the shot.
The island's biggest hospitals have reported that as many as 80 per cent of test results are coming back positive, with PNG Prime Minister James Marape saying the virus has "broken loose".
PNG, which has a population of roughly 9 million, has been receiving shipments of vaccines from Australia and other countries. It should have enough shots in the next three or four months for everyone who wants to be vaccinated, officials have said.
The soaring COVID-19 infection rate in PNG has Queensland's top doctor worried.
Queensland's Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young on Saturday said she was "very concerned" for Australia's nearest neighbour.
"This is terrible for PNG, they managed this so well until recently," she told reporters.
"It's because the virus is changing, it's now got out into their communities and as we've always suspected might happen, it's spreading very, very quickly.
"It's an enormous concern."
Dr Young said "severely unwell" coronavirus patients from PNG were being transferred for treatment in Queensland hospitals.
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk (left) and Chief Health Officer Dr Jeannette Young (right). Source: AAP
"For us here, I am not concerned, we have very good systems in place," she said. "We know when (people from PNG) come into Queensland, they're going into hotel quarantine or directly to hospitals."
It comes as COVID-19 vaccinations are rolled out across Cape York Peninsula in the far north of the state and the Torres Strait Islands to reduce the risk of the outbreak spreading south from PNG.
Saibai, the northernmost of the island chain, is just a few kilometres, or a short dinghy trip, from PNG.
It was the first site health officials administered the vaccine due to a heightened risk to the community.
Vaccination teams will continue working in the Torres Strait throughout April with Horn and Hammond Islands, about 20km northwest of the tip of Cape York, the next to receive the jab from Tuesday.
There are currently no quarantine requirements or travel restrictions for Queensland's remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
However a treaty that allows villagers on the northern islands to travel between the Torres Strait and PNG without visas was suspended in March 2020.
A small team of Australian medical professionals was recently dispatched to PNG to assist the country's overburdened health system.
Faith groups, medical experts and humanitarian organisations earlier this week urged the Morrison government to commit to sending one million Australian-made doses of the vaccine to PNG.
Australia has previously sent 8,480 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to PNG following warnings the situation was becoming a humanitarian crisis.
Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs has said the PNG government does not expect to be ready to roll out a mass vaccination campaign until mid-May.
With Reuters.
