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The Canberra Times
The Canberra Times
National
Dan Jervis-Bardy

ACT records 13 cases of COVID-19

The ACT has reported 13 new cases of COVID-19 to 8pm Saturday.

Of the new cases, all are linked to known infections.

Eight were in quarantine for their entire infectious period, but five were infectious in the community.

There are 10 people in hospital with coronavirus, including one in intensive care.

All of the patients - including four people aged under 40 - were unvaccinated.

A total of 250 cases have been detected since the start of Canberra's outbreak, although 20 of those people have now recovered.

ACT chief health officer Kerryn Coleman revealed on Sunday that a person unknowingly infectious with Covid had visited the Ainslie Village social housing complex.

The number of people in mandatory quarantine has dropped to around 800, down from nearly 20,000 in the early days of Canberra's lockdown.

Chief Minister Andrew Barr believed Canberra was "on the path" to quashing the Covid cluster.

But he warned that even if this outbreak was brought under control, the ACT would have to tread carefully through the spring months amid the persistent threat of further cases seeping into territory from NSW.

NSW reported a record 1218 cases and six deaths on Sunday.

"We are still exposed to a new spark, another wave of the virus coming to the ACT," Mr Barr said.

"Whatever we do, we're going to have to be very careful and measured in our response over the next three months. It remains the case that spring is going to be difficult, because we're going to be balancing a reality that our population is still not a sufficiently vaccinated.

"We will need to have the other measures in place, including public health restrictions and directions in order to protect the unvaccinated.

Mr Barr said about 65 per cent of Canberra residents aged over 16 had received one dose of the vaccine, with coverage of the over-12s population eclipsing 60 per cent.

The ACT will depart from the national plan and count young adolescent towards its 70 and 80 per cent vaccination targets.

Enforcement of the ACT's public health directions has ramped up over the weekend.

Mr Barr said ACT Policing had ordered 17 drivers to leave the ACT after stopping more than 520 cars. Police had issued two cautions after receiving some 88 complaints.

Access Canberra reported strong compliance with new click-and-collect rules after visiting more than 110 venues.

The ACT had reported 26 new cases to 8pm on Friday, with the overwhelming majority linked to existing outbreaks or cases.

ACT government-run testing clinics had minimal wait times on Sunday morning, ACT Health said.

ACT chief health officer Dr Kerryn Coleman. Picture: Elesa Kurtz

ACT chief health officer Dr Kerryn Coleman on Saturday said she was "very comfortable" with the trajectory of the outbreak but cautioned almost one-third of people were not in quarantine while infectious.

"We fully expected when we saw the large number of exposure sites that came out of our initial first few cases that we would see numbers rise up, that we would see a plateau and it will take a little while before we would start to see those fall," Dr Coleman said.

"I'm very comfortable with where we're at at the moment, but a note of caution that we still are seeing approximately a third of all new cases that are infectious in the community for some proportion of time."

Another 6.5-hour period at a Ngunnawal restaurant linked to three COVID-19 cases has been added to Canberra's growing list of exposure venues.

Anyone who was at Mirchi Indian Cuisine from 4pm to 10:30pm on August 24 will have to self-isolate for 14 days regardless of their test result after the restaurant was declared a close-contact exposure site.

The Riley Close restaurant had already been listed as a close contact site from 2pm to 10pm on August 22 and 4pm to 10.30pm on August 23.

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