A double-vaccinated Canberra man in his 20s has died in a NSW hospital from COVID-19. The man died at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney, according to NSW health officials.

He had received two doses of the vaccine and had no known underlying health conditions.

He was one of six virus-related deaths reported in the state on Thursday.

There were almost 35,000 new infections reported in NSW as it battles an explosion of cases.

It comes as new changes came into effect on Thursday in the ACT, which had changed the definition for contacts.

ACT Chief Health Officer Dr Kerryn Coleman said contacts of cases will now be classified as high, medium or low risk.

Positive cases will still need to do seven days of quarantine along with household contacts.

A high-risk contact – someone who has spent a considerable amount of time at home with a positive case – will also need to undergo quarantine and get a PCR test.

A contact who has been with a positive case at a place such as a restaurant or bar for a few hours will be classified as medium risk, and will need to have a rapid test plus another one six days after.

A low-risk contact – someone who has only spent a short amount of time with a positive case – will only need to monitor for symptoms.

But discretion has been left up to Canberrans with grey areas between risk thresholds. 

There were 992 infections reported in the ACT today, up from 810 cases the day before.

Twenty patients are in ACT hospitals with Covid, two of whom are in intensive care and two ventilated.

With rising cases in the national capital, the ACT government will re-establish a mass vaccination clinic at Canberra Airport in late January.

The clinic will be used as part of the territory’s rollout of booster doses. To date, 18.9% of ACT residents aged 18 and over have received a booster shot.

More than 32,000 doses will be administered each week across the airport clinic and the pre-existing mass clinic at the Australian Institute of Sport.

The number of doses per week will be higher than the levels seen at the peak of Canberra’s vaccine drive during the ACT’s lockdown which began on 12 August last year.

By AAP Andrew Brown in Canberra with Newstate Media

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