Meanwhile, industry bodies are concerned residents in Canberra aged care homes are being put under "extreme lockdown" measures following COVID-19 exposures.

The Canberra Times is aware of nine Canberra aged care homes or retirement villages which have been exposed to the virus. These include Fred Ward Gardens in Curtin, Greenway Views in Tuggeranong and Baptist Care in Griffith.

Warrigal Queanbeyan has also had an outbreak. A letter from Craig Smith saying 123 PCR tests were taken on residents following a positive result from a staff member.

"The family members have been contacted. All of the residents are vaccinated and not displaying any symptoms," the letter said.

"I understand that you may want to consider taking your loved one home for the duration of the lockdown, particularly in Brindabella South where five of the six residents have tested positive."

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Several of the Canberra centres have restricted visitors and outings for residents.

A letter from Villaggio in Page on January 4 said the home was in lockdown until at least January 13.

Baptist Care in Griffith is under lockdown, with three staff members having tested positive. A letter to families on January 3 said "residents have been asked to limit their movements and may be asked to remain in their home."

An email to loved ones of residents at Fred Ward Gardens sent on Wednesday afternoon said some residents were being placed in quarantine. A follow-up said they would be out by Sunday.

"[Restrictions] will be in place for residents in Cottage7 with no outings and no visitation except for end of life with approval from the Public Health Unit," the email said.

Aged and Community Services Australia CEO Paul Sadler said he was concerned some residents were being placed in unnecessarily severe lockdown conditions.

"ACT Health ... is saying that homes need to lockdown. Well, in some instances we're hearing of then the residents being told they have to stay in their rooms, and they can't come out of them," he said.

"And these lockdowns, sometimes because of the widespread nature of Omicron, they're going on for weeks and weeks and months. And that's not sustainable, particularly where the residents have received their booster shot."

Chief Executive of Councils on the Ageing Ian Yates said residents should be allowed a visitor while under outbreak conditions.

"The damage that has been done by the extreme lockdown approach is enormous to residents' emotional, mental, and indeed physical health," he said.

"Because someone locked in their room, for example, for an extended period, not only is emotionally distraught and not having connection with family, but actually deteriorates physically."

Mr Sadler said he was concerned there were unofficially high numbers of COVID in residential aged care homes in ACT and NSW.

"The feedback I'm getting from providers, both in Canberra but also more broadly across New South Wales, which is that the case rates and the number of outbreaks are really skyrocketing high," he said.

"Clearly Omicron is spreading so rapidly across the general community, that we're finding staff members, family members, but also residents if they go out, contracting COVID or being close contacts."

Mr Yates said the outbreaks this time were different to earlier in the pandemic. He said nearly all residents and 100 per cent of staff were vaccinated.

"Unless you were to both lock residents and staff in facilities all the time you do, it's very hard to escape the risk of an asymptomatic staff member bringing COVID into a facility," he said.

Mr Sadler said evidence suggested the Omicron variant was less severe.

"Some of the providers that I've been speaking to in the last couple of days that telling me that the spread and the severity of the disease is certainly less in the aged care homes," he said.

Both Mr Yates and Mr Sadler said aged care facilities were struggling with staff, particularly over the holiday period.

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Mr Sadler said some providers had lost between 10 to 30 per cent of their staff over the Christmas period.

Challenges include workers being furloughed, catching COVID, taking time off, the closed borders reducing overseas staff, and competition between disability, healthcare and aged care for workers.

Mr Sadler said it was important that state, territory and federal governments provided data on infections within aged care homes.

"We also know that with the swap to using RAT rather than PCR [tests], we're not going to know where the case numbers are anywhere as easily," he said.

Mr Yates said what was important was the communication between public health authorities, the providers, residents and families.

'I think that's more important than the community as a whole following in detail what's happening," he said.

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