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The Canberra Times
The Canberra Times
National
Lucy Bladen

Canberra man dies with COVID-19

In-depth COVID

A Canberra man has died with COVID-19, ACT Health has reported.

Health authorities have extended their condolences to the family and friends of the man who was in his 80s.

The man was the 101st person to die with the virus in the ACT since the start of the pandemic.

There were 135 people with COVID-19 in Canberra hospitals in the 24 hours to 8pm on Friday.

Of those, two patients are in the ICU and one is on ventilation.

Case numbers in Canberra continue to decline. There were 579 new cases recorded in the latest reporting period. Of those, 305 were from PCR tests and 274 from rapid antigen tests.

There are now just 4095 known active cases in the ACT. This time last month, there were 7354 known active infections.

ACT health authorities are increasingly confident the ACT has passed the peak of its winter COVID-19 wave.

Authorities had initially warned there could be up to 3000 cases a day in August in Canberra.

But while the peak of the current wave has appeared to pass, Chief Minister Andrew Barr said health authorities expected a new peak of infections to coincide with the northern hemisphere winter, sometime in the next four to six months.

"National cabinet is very well aware that we will need to have plans in place to respond to whatever new variant of the virus will hit the world in the northern hemisphere winter," Mr Barr said.

Concerns over booster rates  

Meanwhile, state and federal authorities are concerned the number of Australians getting their third dose of COVID-19 vaccine is flatlining.

To date, 71.4 per cent of eligible Australians - or just over 14.1 million people - have received a third dose.

But there are more than 5.6 million yet to get their booster.

Queensland is the worst-performing state, with 64.5 per cent of eligible residents boosted, while the ACT has the best coverage (79.9 per cent).

"Third booster dose rates have flatlined, which is something I'm very concerned about," Health Minister Mark Butler said.

Our coverage of the health and safety aspects of this outbreak of COVID-19 in the ACT is free for anyone to access. However, we depend on subscription revenue to support our journalism. If you are able, please subscribe here. If you are already a subscriber, thank you for your support. You can also sign up for our newsletters for regular updates.

Canberra has appeared to have passed the peak of the current COVID wave. Picture: Sitthixay Ditthavong
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