Canberra won’t come out of lockdown early, but the ACT could tweak restrictions as its COVID outbreak grows to 176 cases.
Chief Minister Andrew Barr has ruled out ending the lockdown before September 2, but flagged changes to be announced before the weekend.
Whether the lockdown drags on depends on the number of people infectious in the community and whether cases can be linked.
“We will come out of this gently, week-by-week as we continue to get our vaccination rate up,” Mr Barr told reporters.
Nationally, he didn’t expect the 80 per cent full vaccination threshold to be reached until the end of November.
“The challenge for Canberra is how many more of us can we protect through vaccination between now and then,” the chief minister said.
Mr Barr foreshadowed movement across borders being much more free at the back end of the year and into 2022.
Canberra reported nine new COVID infections on Wednesday. Of these, eight were linked and four in the community while infectious.
A person with a disability was among the new cases, taking the number of cases in that sector to 18.
Overall cases included seven people in hospital, one of them an unvaccinated woman in her 40s requiring ventilation.
Two other patients were in hospital because of other health conditions and not COVID-19.
Children comprise 38 per cent of the ACT’s overall cases, while 46 per cent are adults under the age of 45.
AAP
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