After Canberra's fifth record day of hospitalised COVID patients, it is likely the territory is heading for another wave as cases surge.
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There were 121 people with the virus in hospital in the 24 hours to Monday 8pm including a number of people in the Canberra Hospital cancer ward.
Clinical director from Canberra Hospital Cancer Centre, Paul Craft, described it as a "significant outbreak" but it now "appears to be settling" as they have not had any new cases for four days.
Mr Craft acknowledged they weren't sure how the outbreak began but it was detected from the regular testing the ward conducted for staff and patients every two days.
"We do have the one person who initially tested positive and then a number of others cascading through, the total number's about 14, several of those people have recovered fully and have gone home already," he said.
"No one's got very ill from it fortunately so we haven't had to transfer patients to the COVID ward, and no one's got illness that would ever need to go to ICU, so we're hoping there'll be a good recovery for the patients."
The ward has been closed until all patients recover, meaning others in need of cancer treatment are in other parts of the hospital.
"We have another ward that houses people with cancer and they're going there and also some patients are being accommodated in other wards in the hospital," he said.
The BA.5 Omicron subvariant is expected to drive an increase in COVID-19 cases and hospitalisations over the coming weeks, as the ACT recorded 1159 new cases in the 24 hours until 8pm Monday.
Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith said they were "keeping a close eye on the case numbers" to determine the trajectory into the coming months.
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"We are seeing those case numbers starting to increase and we expect that is potentially the start of another wave of COVID-19 through this winter period into July and potentially into early August," she said.
Infectious disease expert from the Australian National University Professor Peter Collignon said the new variant "seemed to be more transmissible" with "less immunity ... from vaccination and even natural infection".
"That would imply, particularly because it's winter we may see an increase in infections, but equally it may not be as bad as people are expecting," he said.
Professor Collignon said because a large mixture of people have "been vaccinated and they have natural immunity" from previously getting COVID-19, the new variant "may not go up catastrophically".
"I don't think the pressure is going to come off hospitals for a few months, at least not over winter, but I don't think it'll be 10 times worse than what it is now," he said.
A recent study by Professor Collignon also found the outside is not only better for preventing COVID, but outside air also has a "dilution effect on any respiratory particles".
"There is enough evidence around that outside air is more protective than inside air and also a reasonable amount of evidence that good ventilation rates gives you more protection than basically keeping stale air in the building," he said.
"And interestingly the British department of defence did all this work in the 60s and 70s as germ warfare research and found that the outside air was good at killing viruses and bacteria but not spores."
As "anthrax is a spore" used by Germany, Professor Collignon said it was "bad new for the UK defence but maybe good news for everybody" since COVID.
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