The ACT could see "wavelets" of COVID-19 similar to NSW, which announced a new wave of infections in the state.
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NSW Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant said on Thursday the latest NSW infections data indicates a new wave of COVID-19 in the state.
"We are starting to see an increase in COVID cases and changes in the variants circulating in NSW, which tells us we are entering the next COVID wave," Dr Chant said.
She said COVID-19 cases are likely to continue rising in coming weeks, based on local and overseas information.
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Dr Peter Collignon, infectious diseases physician and professor at ANU Medical School said Canberrans can also expect increased cases as "the ACT tends to track NSW".
"We're likely to see some increased cases, but it's going to be nothing like the waves we've seen in the first nine months of this year," Dr Collignon said.
He said the reason for this is the increased cases are variants of Omicron which the ACT has already experienced, and there is no evidence vaccines are not effective against preventing death and hospitalisation.
Dr Chant said the most common variants in circulation are the BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron variants and NSW data shows the Omicron variants' dominance has diminished and is currently at 63 per cent.
She also said the state is seeing a rise in XBB, BQ 1.1 and BA 2 sublineages, with NSW Health monitoring the emerging variants.
Dr Collignon said Australia can look to countries like Singapore and France who have had infections increase but later come down.
"If you look at deaths and hospitalisation, those waves are much, much smaller, and have been even with these variants than when it first goes through a population. So I think these will be more like wavelets rather than waves."
He said the people at risk the most are still the elderly and many of them have not gotten their third and fourth boosters.
Dr Chant also echoed this concern, saying "the protection the New South Wales community has from vaccination and previous infection continues to reduce the risk of severe illness. However the elderly and those with underlying health conditions will continue to be at higher risk".
She urged people to stay home if they cold or flu like symptoms and get tested for COVID-19 and stay home if they've tested positive, despite National Cabinet scrapping isolation requirements in October.
COVID-19 testing and reporting is also no longer a requirement, but Dr Collignon said the ACT should conduct sewerage testing.
"If you do sewage testing, and you report those in a timely fashion, which I don't think we're doing in Australia, that gives you about a week's warning before we actually even see case numbers and probably 10 days before you see hospitalisations, because you're testing everybody," he said.
ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr told the ABC on Friday morning sewerage testing "won't give us any additional information that we don't already source through other forms of testing".
Dr Collignon said Australia must now look to Europe and North America as they go through winter, to see how effective vaccines are against any new variants.
On Friday, ACT Health reported one COVID-19 death this week, a man in his 70s, one more than the previous week.
The total number of COVD deaths is now 128 and one person still remains in intensive care in Canberra.
There were 910 COVID-19 cases in the territory this week, until Thursday 4pm, 179 more than last week.
517 cases were detected through a rapid antigen test, while 393 were found through PCR testing.
The territory also reported a 0.4 per cent increase in people aged 50 and over getting their forth vaccination.
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