The ACT Government will ease quarantine requirements for household contacts of people who have COVID-19 from 11.59pm on Tuesday 26 April, largely bringing the Territory into line with NSW and Victorian restrictions, ACT Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith announced today.

Household contacts no longer have to quarantine if they have no COVID symptoms, but must minimise their movement in the community. People 12 and older must wear masks indoors outside the home; contacts must get tested for COVID before they return to work or school; and they must not enter high-risk settings like aged care facilities or hospitals (unless they live there or need care) for a week from the first time a person in their household tests positive.

People who test positive must still isolate for seven days.

“These changes to quarantine requirements will provide relief for many people, both for employers and individuals,” Ms Stephen-Smith said. “There are many households who have had to quarantine a number of times as different family members have become positive for COVID-19, or they’ve had exposure over time.

“This is about enabling people to get back to work, where they’re not able to work from home and where the employer is able to put in place work health and safety arrangements, but also taking that pressure off families, who have been sometimes really quite affected by quarantine requirements.”

Household contacts must advise both ACT Health (by completing a COVID-19 declaration form) and their employer or educational facility that they are a household contact.

Household contacts must work or study from home where practical. If not, and the employer and individual agree for them to attend work or study, they must return a negative test result within 24 hours before they return, and be tested every 48 hours.

The ACT Government will soon reveal education settings for Term Two, which beings on Tuesday 26 April.

Household contacts must not leave their home if they develop any symptoms of COVID-19, even if they return a negative rapid antigen test result.

“They still need to remain at home while they are symptomatic until their symptoms resolve,” Ms Stephen-Smith said.

If the contact needs to attend an unavoidable gathering – like a funeral, or voting in the federal election – they must return a negative test result 24 hours beforehand.

If they leave their house, household contacts should avoid crowded places as far as possible; avoid spending prolonged periods indoors with other people; and avoid interacting with elderly or immunocompromised people – those at highest risk from COVID-19.

“These risk mitigations that we’ve put in place, we think, are a good balance between enabling people to get back to the workforce, to get a little bit of relief from quarantine, while also protecting the rest of the community and lowering that risk of further transmission,” Ms Stephen-Smith said.

“This is not about encouraging people to leave quarantine, or opening the door for people to just go out into the community and go into crowded spaces because they feel like it. This is really about saying: if your workplace needs you to come to work because they’re really short-staffed and you cannot work from home, these are the risk mitigations that … enable you to do that with a level of safety.”

From 11.59pm on Friday 29 April, quarantine requirements for international travellers to Australia will be removed. They are, however, encouraged to get a COVID-19 test within 24 hours of their arrival.

The ACT quarantine requirements will change four days after NSW and Victoria. Ms Stephen-Smith said it seemed “prudent” to wait to implement the changes.

“We are just being a bit careful about how we implement it, and making sure that we can do everything we need to do to bring these changes through the system.”

Businesses welcome news

The Canberra Business Chamber said the changes to the COVID isolation rules would help ease pressure on local businesses, many of which have dealt with crippling workforce shortages for months.

Graham Catt, Canberra Business Chamber CEO, said: “We’ve been hearing regularly from businesses who are forced to close or reduce their operations due to staff shortages, while their healthy workers remained in isolation at home, unable to work because of isolation rules.

“Bookings are cancelled, goods and services can’t be provided to customers, and many businesses are now months behind in filling orders.”

Around a quarter of employers have told the Chamber they have been impacted by staff shortages, so changes to the isolation rules that align the Territory with NSW and Victoria will enable more employees to stay at work, ensuring businesses can keep their doors open and keep the economy moving.

“Ensuring that as many workers as possible can safely return to the workplace is critical to relieving the labour and supply chain pressures hurting ACT businesses right now,” said Mr Catt. “And without changes to the current isolation rules, our economic recovery and our longer-term economic growth are at risk.”

Changes to COVID clinic hours

Opening hours for the COVID-19 walk-in clinic at the Garran Surge Centre have changed; the clinic is now open from 8.30am to 5pm every day. It will no longer be open in the evening, as few people attended then, Ms Stephen-Smith said.

From Tuesday 26 April, operating hours at the AIS Arena COVID-19 Mass Vaccination Clinic will be reduced to one shift per day, from 8am to 5pm every day, to align with current demand, she said.

People who need after hours help can contact the COVID care at home team, Healthdirect, or the CALMS after-hours GP service.

These changes were made because of high demand and workforce pressures on the hospital system, Ms Stephen-Smith said.

“Apologies to people if they are seeing increased waiting times across our service,” she said, “and particular thanks to our health care workers, who are working really hard at the moment.”

Preparing for winter

The Public Health Emergency declaration is due to expire on 13 May, and likely will be extended, Ms Stephen-Smith said.

The ACT Government is preparing for an outbreak of influenza – the first in two years – and the delta strain this winter.

Ms Stephen-Smith strongly encouraged the public to get their flu jab, and their booster shot (or vaccinations) if they had not already.

“Vaccination has made a very big difference to people getting unwell from COVID-19,” she said. “Certainly, people getting very unwell, being hospitalised, and dying from COVID-19 is significantly reduced with vaccinations.”

Vaccinated people were also less likely to develop ‘long COVID’.

If case numbers increase, the government may reintroduce mandatory indoor mask wearing.

“We’re clearly planning for this winter period, but we don’t really know what it’s going to look like,” Ms Stephen-Smith said. “Two months has been a long time in the journey of the pandemic, so it’s really hard for us to actually predict what it’s going to look like in June, July, and August.”

Half of all Canberrans, according to some estimates, have had COVID-19, but that has not impacted the hospital system, Ms Stephen-Smith said. Others had been exposed on numerous occasions without contracting the virus, indicating they were unlikely to.

“We’re really going to have to look at all of those factors,” she said. “If we see an increase in cases, but it’s a lot of young people who then don’t tend to get very sick and don’t end up in hospital, that’s going to be different than if we start seeing a lot of cases in people who are more vulnerable to their significant impacts.”

COVID-19 treatment had improved, and would become normalised as oral treatments were made available through the primary care system, rather than being specialised through the hospitals.

“All of those things will come into play as we move over the next few months into that winter period,” Ms Stephen-Smith said.

“The Canberra community are willing to do what needs to be done to protect the most vulnerable members of our community, who experience the worst outcomes of COVID-19.

“I’m confident that if the numbers and our experience demonstrate that we need to put in place additional measures through that winter period, that Canberrans will support that.”