While for some the relaxed definition of a close contact was a relief, others with vulnerable family members felt more fearful than ever.
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Yesterday case numbers in the ACT broke records again, with 462 positive cases taking the active total in the territory to 1658.
For mother of two Rachel Corbett, the rapid spread of COVID was a horrifying reality. Her eldest daughter Maddi, 7, has end stage renal failure.
"Basically Maddi's kidneys don't work, so she's on dialysis every night. She's on a lot of medications, all her food is electrolyte-counted and her water has to be measured, so we're always very busy," Ms Corbett said.
"My heart is really broken for Maddi. Lockdown was really hard. We worked so hard to get her into a mainstream primary school safely to make her life as normal as possible, so for it to be taken away again with COVID is awful.
"The mental health side of things has such a big impact on her being away from her friends and not doing things that are normal. The risk of increased cases means I have to make daily decisions for her and our family about her physical and mental health.
"It's the holidays and all she wants to do is see her friends and I don't know if she can again, I think we're stuck here in these four walls preventing her from getting out there and being a kid, watching her face when I told her she can't go on a play date was heartbreaking."
The major changes to close contact definitions has put an extreme pressure on families like Ms Corbett's, which she said increased her anxiety.
"I'm scared and I'm sad and I don't know what life's going to look like for our family and for Maddi in the future. It's scarier than it was before because it's more out of control," she said.
"I'm not happy about the changes to close contacts. The more information we have the better and reducing what is defined by a close contact prevents families like mine making informed decisions. We need the information to make the best decisions we can for our children and we want to be able to give them the best life.
"There are people with chronic illnesses and vulnerabilities, we're still here and we haven't gone anywhere. We still have to live every day and we still have to try and give our children the best life that we can and the decisions are getting harder and harder to make."
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Founder of the Stella Bella Children's Centre, Suzanne Tunks, runs the daycare centre which provides special respite services for seriously ill children and said a lot of families like Ms Corbett's felt unsupported.
"These families are already exhausted, their kids are missing out on living a normal life and they're terrified," Ms Tunks said.
"What's even more terrifying is a lot of our families go to Sydney for regular treatments and a lot of clinics get postponed which is impacting on health care that they need.
"The trauma is already with families and I myself am terrified I'll be the person that brings COVID into the centre with all these vulnerable kids."
Since hearing of the recent changes policy changes, Ms Tunks was already planning to put in place measures to further protect the children who visited her centre.
"I've been doing a lot of reading about the different tests, so I'll be recommending only certain home tests that are most accurate and I've also bought stock to provide parents who need them," Ms Tunks said.
"I will reiterate our version of close contact rules so that I basically will have the government of Stella Bella to keep our little community as safe as we can, regardless of what the rest of the government is doing around us."
Professor Catherine Bennett, the chair of epidemiology at Deakin University, said: "These are the people we have to be thinking about.
"I know a lot of people choose not to be vaccinated say it's their choice but in fact it does impact other people so actually getting vaccinated, particularly getting boosters to protect us against Omicron will help we hope," Professor Bennett said.
"Omicron itself we think is not as capable of causing as severe illness but that's difficult to say for people who are immunocompromised because we haven't had a breakdown yet of who does end up in hospital so we always worry about those most vulnerable.
"The good news for people is that we've got secondary prevention methods such as monoclonal antibodies and antivirals as well as watching out for signs of infections and now that PCR queues are likely to lesson people can get a quicker result to respond straight away.
"All the things that we do to protect ourselves from infection such as masks and social distancing are going to protect those most vulnerable as well."
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