Professor James Ward from UQ's Poche Centre for Indigenous Health spoke to ABC about the risk for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people if the nation opens up prematurely.
"We are advocating very strongly for the states and territories to hold back on opening up until sufficient numbers of Aboriginal communities are vaccinated," he said.
"We've seen this globally, when people have been unvaccinated in other Indigenous populations, people lose their lives, and what we don't want is for our elders to lose their lives."