The ACT's Health Minister has conceded she is nervous about the rapidly changing COVID-19 situation but says a high vaccination rate and low numbers in Canberra's hospitals are cause for optimism.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Rachel Stephen-Smith said health authorities expected to see coronavirus cases as a result of New Year's celebrations, but the increase in cases so far was still within authorities' expectations.
"I hope that people look at the escalation in case numbers and that that gives them cause to take that personal responsibility that everyone's been talking about for COVID safe behaviours, particularly to not go out if they're feeling at all unwell and to take a test instead," Ms Stephen-Smith said.
The ACT on Friday broke its daily case number record for the third time this week, when 462 cases were reported, almost double Thursday's tally of 253 cases. There were six people in ACT hospitals with COVID-19 at 8pm on Thursday and no one in intensive care.
Coronavirus case numbers in NSW surged more than 70 per cent in a single day as the state reported 21,151 new infections on Friday. There were 32,946 new cases reported across Australia.
Ms Stephen-Smith said the ACT government was closely monitoring the situation in NSW and considering what impact a large number of COVID-19 cases would have on the territory's health system, but hospitalisation and intensive care admissions would not be the only indicator of COVID's strain.
"As we start to see more community transmission and more people being exposed to COVID in the community, that will obviously impact not just healthcare workers but a range of other workers in essential services," she said.
"That, I think, has the potential in the health space to be more impactful in some ways than the number of people we have in hospital in terms of our health system capacity and capability.
"We're also obviously having to adjust the way that we support people with COVID-19 in the community; that is going to be a big call on our health system. So it's not just the number of people in our hospital but the number of people who need to be supported through our COVID care at home type response or through their general practitioner, that is also going to place pressure on the health system."
Ms Stephen-Smith said health authorities were working through the changes that followed a national cabinet meeting on Thursday, where state and territory leaders agreed to a nationally consistent definition of a close coronavirus contact.
"It isn't something you can just switch on overnight. So the team will take this weekend and a few days to really refine the processes to implement some of the changes that are being made out of national cabinet. Some of those came into effect at midnight last night, other logistical and practical changes will take some time to flow through the system," she said.
Ms Stephen-Smith also reiterated the ACT government's appeal for Canberrans to take up booster vaccination shots.
The new close contact definition, which predominantly captures household contacts except when localised declarations are made in high-risk venues, will mean fewer people need to line up for a laboratory polymerase chain reaction COVID tests.
Advice from the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee, which is made up of state and territory chief health officers and the Commonwealth chief medical officer, said it was "not desirable if large numbers of contacts are quarantined" amid significant levels of population exposure.
"Therefore, household or household-like contacts are the key group who should be required to quarantine as these individuals are the most likely to develop disease," the advice, released on Thursday night, said.
"In addition, where a significant transmission event has been documented those who were at this site or venue may be determined to be close contacts. This may include worksites."
Close contacts who test positive on rapid antigen tests will still be required to confirm their result on a PCR test, which will mean test result data will need to be interpreted differently.
READ MORE:
Ms Stephen-Smith said: "We're still in a global pandemic, so this is not a normal infectious disease response. But there will be a different way, I think, of counting and estimating our overall case numbers."
She said the nature of the virus had changed with the Omicron variant and there was now high vaccination coverage, which meant the response could shift away from the aggressive suppression approach taken at the start of the Delta outbreak in August.
National cabinet on Friday agreed out of session to drop the requirement for confirmed COVID-19 cases to test negative with a rapid antigen test on the sixth day of isolation before their release; cases who are asymptomatic will be released on the seventh day automatically while symptomatic cases must remain in isolation.
ACT Health on Friday said its Mitchell and Garran COVID-19 testing clinics would no longer offer certificates for people travelling overseas, and this service would now only be offered by private pathology laboratories.
Our coverage of the health and safety aspects of this outbreak of COVID-19 in the ACT is free for anyone to access. However, we depend on subscription revenue to support our journalism. If you are able, please subscribe here. If you are already a subscriber, thank you for your support. You can also sign up for our newsletters for regular updates.
Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content:
- Bookmark canberratimes.com.au
- Download our app
- Make sure you are signed up for our breaking and regular headlines newsletters
- Follow us on Twitter
- Follow us on Instagram