The ACT government is considering opening a second mass vaccination clinic following the ATAGI announcement that boosters can be accessed four months after a second dose.
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That will be slashed to just three months from January 31.
ACT Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith said the government is planning on increasing staffing at the AIS mass vaccination clinic, which will close Friday at 3pm and re-open on January 4.
She said they are considering opening a second mass vaccination clinic, or "other options."
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"This doesn't mean that everyone will be able to get their booster on day one when they are eligible," Ms Stephen-Smith said.
She said nearly 50,000 Canberrans have already had a booster or third dose.
"In precise numbers, that's 49,824 Canberrans who've had a booster or a third dose, and that's 14.4 per cent of the ACT population aged 18 or over that's covered," she said.
Vaccinations for children
The health minister also said all the requests for vaccination bookings for children aged 5 to 11 had been cleared. She said those bookings would be held for the children, and not taken by booster or third dose appointments.
"Yesterday, [staff] cleared all the callbacks for five to 11 year old bookings for next year. And they've now taken over 9700 bookings that have been made as at noon today," she said.
"If you are waiting to get your child booked in please don't panic, no one else is going to get in ahead of you because that phone line is closed down.
"If you are waiting for a callback the team will get through. We expect the team will be able to get through all the callbacks that have been requested to date."
The phone booking line closed at 12pm on Friday, and will re-open on the morning of January 4 next year.
Exposure location 'glitch'
The online list of exposure locations in the ACT has not been updated since Wednesday, December 22 at 6.33pm.
Ms Stephen-Smith said she was told in a morning briefing that there was a "glitch" yesterday that prevented casual and close contacts from being listed on the ACT Health website.
The public health team is also working through changes to the criteria of close and casual contact locations, as indicated by the chief health officer on Thursday, which may have impacted the timelines of sites being listed.
"What I would say to everyone of course is if you have the slightest of symptoms of COVID-19, please sit out the Christmas party, go and get tested and just make sure that you know what those symptoms are and that they're not COVID-19 before you go and spend time particularly with relatives and friends who may be more vulnerable older relatives and friends are those with underlying health conditions," she said.
"And if you are having your Christmas gatherings to the extent that you can have those outdoors and continue to practice your COVID safe behaviors, people should absolutely be doing that."
More than 1000 in quarantine, hospitalisations expected
The ACT has reported 102 new cases of COVID-19 in the 24 hours to 8pm Thursday.
Case numbers have now broken ACT records three days in a row with 58 cases announced on Wednesday and 85 on Thursday.
There are two people in hospital because of COVID, with none in intensive care.
Ms Stephen-Smith said there were just over 900 people in quarantine as of Thursday morning, but with the increase in cases she expected that number would be "significantly over 1000".
She said Canberra's hospitals were predicting about four COVID patients to be in the unit within a fortnight, in line with the uptick in positive cases.
Positive case no longer receive a call to inform them they have the virus. Instead, cases are sent an SMS with a survey that allows contact tracers to gather information on the patients condition and prioritise follow-up phone calls.
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