Health authorities in the ACT will begin providing more information about COVID-19 cases in the ACT, including issuing a weekly report on the vaccination status of hospitalised cases.
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Daily updates in the territory will also include an age-range breakdown for positive cases from later this week, with the ACT finally moving to provide information more in line with other states.
A more detailed epidemiological update will be released weekly, which is set to include information on vaccination status and whether people remain in hospital after being cleared of their COVID-19 infection.
A spokesman for ACT Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith said health authorities were working to expand both daily and weekly COVID statistical reports following a series of "robust discussions".
Health authorities were still working on how they could publicly report comorbidity information for people who died from a COVID-19 infection, the spokesman said.
The changes come after The Canberra Times reported health officials had misled the public over why they blocked the release of COVID-19 patient comorbidity data despite knowing it was "an important part of the picture".
The data was withheld because of unspecified privacy reasons, but authorities said publicly it was because they did not "routinely collect that data".
Internal emails, released under freedom of information laws, show that during the worst period for deaths in the pandemic, ACT health officials were concerned about the public misinterpreting data and so kept these and other facts secret.
This even included information Ms Stephen-Smith wanted to know.
MORE A.C.T. POLITICS NEWS:
Acting Chief Health Officer Dr Vanessa Johnston on Friday defended the Health Directorate's handling of COVID-19 information, arguing information that was once in the public interest to know was no longer.
Dr Johnston said Canberrans "absolutely had a right to know" about the territory's COVID situation, but she said the release of information about a small number of people was not in the public interest.
She also said health officials were barred from providing the information due to legislation.
A spokesman for Ms Stephen-Smith on Monday said discussions were still underway on how to balance the public release of information with patients' right to privacy, but the number of cases recorded each week in the ACT meant it was possible to adequately anonymise vaccination status information.
The ACT Health Directorate has released a weekly one-page summary of the COVID-19 outbreak situation since mid-December, but this has not always contained consistent and comparable datasets.
The equivalent report in NSW is nine pages, and includes age and vaccination status breakdowns of COVID-19 hospitalisations and deaths, along with location information and test diagnosis type.
The Victorian government provides spreadsheets with information on active COVID-19 cases, test results and case prevalence by area.
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