Gold Creek School staff, students get tested following covid case

ACT Health set up a pop-up testing centre at the school gym on Saturday morning to take the load off the already stretched public testing facilities.

ACT chief health officer Dr Kerryn Coleman said investigations as to how the 14-year-old student contracted the virus were still going and that genomic sequencing was being conducted.

Staff, students and visitors who attended the Gold Creek School junior and senior campuses, Nicholls Early Childhood Centre and Nicholls outside school hours care club from August 9 to 11 are considered close contacts of the COVID-19 case.

As of 11am Friday, ACT Health had identified 1862 close contacts.

Close contact have been told come forward for testing at the pop-up centre at a certain time slot between Saturday and Monday and to quarantine at home for 14 days.

Staff and year 9 students were the first groups tested on Saturday.

Household members of these staff and students are secondary contacts. They need to quarantine and should get tested at a public testing clinic if they develop symptoms.

Staff, students and visitors at the neighbouring Holy Spirit Catholic Primary School are considered casual contacts because they share some facilities with Gold Creek School.

Holy Spirit staff and visitors will be tested at the pop-up centre on Sunday afternoon and students at this school will be tested on Tuesday.

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Construction workers from Rork Projects who were at Gold Creek senior campus have also been told to get tested and isolate at home.

Rork Projects co-owner John Janke said six staff member had been tested and were waiting for results.

Mr Janke said the company followed strong Covid protocols and had only started the footings and foundations for the expansion project.

Emma Prime, who has a daughter at Gold Creek School, said she was shocked when she learned about the positive case.

"With the state of the situation around us in NSW it wasn't going to be surprising if it did end up coming to Canberra. But, [for Covid to] not only to kind of hit Canberra but then straight away hit so close to home ... was a little bit more of a shock," she said.

The psychologist said her family was disappointed that they wouldn't be able to play hockey or even go for a walk in their suburb because of the 14-day quarantine period.

The family of four made a plan of movies to watch, recipes to cook, board games to play and craft to work on to keep themselves busy.

Ms Prime said it was important to have a routine to maintain good mental health during the stressful period.

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