This does not include exceptional circumstances such as end-of-life care, birthing or paediatric care.

The ACT reported a record-breaking number of COVID-19 cases on Thursday, with 85 new cases. There were 58 new daily cases announced on Wednesday. There are 245 active total cases in the territory.

The definition of close contacts will also change, ACT chief health officer Kerryn Coleman announced.

A close contact will now be considered as someone who is a household contact of a case, or someone who has spent a reasonably long amount of time with an infectious case - like four hours in the same room or same small space.

This brings the ACT into line with how New South Wales and Victoria are assessing close contacts.

"If you test positive to COVID-19 or you become a close contact, you can now expect your first notification from us to be in a text message or a phone call," Ms Coleman said.

"Our teams will be focusing on whether cases have visited any high risk sites."

Casual contacts will not be followed up and will no longer need to fill in a declaration form. They will be asked to get a test and quarantine until receiving a negative test result. They will also be asked to get a second test six days after an exposure.

"But we won't be formally following you up, and we are actually relying on you guys to be doing the right thing in this space moving forward," Ms Coleman said.

She said despite tightening the rules around exposure sites, the number of locations listed will increase along with a rising number of COVID cases.

She said ACT Health wouldn't be able to contact every business that becomes an exposure site before it is listed.

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Deputy Chief Minister Yvette Berry said because some health workers had taken time off or were in quarantine due to COVID exposures, the ability to increase capacity at test centres was limited.

She said yesterday there were 7051 COVID-19 tests conducted in Canberra, the fourth-highest testing day of the pandemic. She said there had been nearly 30,000 tests collected over the last five days.

"We are hopeful that we will be seeing an easing on testing over the next couple of days," Ms Berry said.

"Increasing capacity right now on those centres is challenging."

She said the large majority of five- to 11-year-olds will be vaccinated before the start of the school term next year.

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Ms Stephens-Smith said she believed long lines at testing centres may ease off on Thursday.

"We're really hoping that by this afternoon, we will have got through most of those holiday related tests or travel related tests," she said.

Vaccination hubs will be closed from December 24, 2021 to January 3, 2022. Some GPs and pharmacies will be open over Christmas.

The vaccination phone booking line will close at 12pm on Friday, December 24 and will reopen on Tuesday, January 4 at 7am.

More to come.

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