Health authorities are cross training staff to have an agile workforce that can respond to a wide range of COVID-19 outbreak scenarios.
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Contact tracers within ACT Health, whose numbers were boosted in response to the coronavirus pandemic, are being trained in case management and site liaison tasks.
Dr Robyn Walker, the acting executive group manager of ACT Health's COVID-19 response unit, said work was under way to maintain a broadly trained and agile workforce.
"We can move as circumstances dictate, as we have done ever since the pandemic started," Dr Walker on Friday said.
"It's not the settings that we were back in early 2020 and so we've got to have a workforce that's able to respond to whatever is thrown at us."
While contact tracing has been wound back since the onset of the Omicron wave of infections in the ACT, additional staff have been retained by ACT Health.
"Since we went to Omicron in around late December, we're not doing the contact tracing of every individual like we were doing during the Delta outbreak," Dr Walker said at a press conference.
"But we still need trained staff to respond and whilst we're not contact tracing, we do contact some of our higher-risk cases - cases that are in aged care facilities, people that perhaps don't respond to our survey when they've had a positive case - and the reason for that is if they don't respond, they might be missing out on treatment options that are really important."
MORE COVID-19 NEWS:
The ACT reported 1122 COVID-19 infections in the 24 hours to 8pm on Friday, the fourth day in a row with a daily case tally above 1000.
There were 1311 new cases reported on Thursday, the highest number of infections in a 24-hour reporting period in almost two months.
Thirty-four people were in ACT hospitals with COVID-19 at 8pm Friday, down from 37 the day before.
Two of the current patients are in intensive care and one is being ventilated.
The more transmissible Omicron BA.2 sub-variant is becoming the most dominant COVID-19 strain in the ACT, making up more than half of all sequenced cases in the territory last week.
NSW reported 19,060 new COVID cases on Saturday, while Victoria reported 7847 cases. There were 5838 new infections reported in Western Australia.
with Hannah Neale
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Jasper Lindell
Jasper Lindell joined The Canberra Times in 2018. He is a Legislative Assembly reporter, covering ACT politics and government. He also writes about development, transport, heritage, local history, literature and the arts, as well as contributing to the Times' Panorama magazine. He was previously a Sunday Canberra Times reporter.
Jasper Lindell joined The Canberra Times in 2018. He is a Legislative Assembly reporter, covering ACT politics and government. He also writes about development, transport, heritage, local history, literature and the arts, as well as contributing to the Times' Panorama magazine. He was previously a Sunday Canberra Times reporter.
