The COVID-19 outbreak in the ACT has likely plateaued but may see a slow decline in the number of cases, unless a new variant takes hold, experts say.
Health authorities are also expecting the number of patients with COVID-19 in Canberra hospitals to gradually decline in the coming weeks, in line with internal modelling, as visitor restrictions for patients are eased.
Professor Catherine Bennett, who holds the chair in epidemiology at Deakin University, said she expected case numbers would continue to drift down in the ACT with high take up of booster shots and weather suited to outdoor gatherings.
"Then at some point in autumn, if nothing else changes, we might expect to see them come up a bit again as people do more indoor mixing and there's more symptoms circulating in the community anyway, so people start to step up the testing again," Professor Bennett said.
Professor Bennett said Australia was in a stronger position now than in 2019 to respond to coronavirus outbreaks, because authorities and the community were no longer blissfully ignorant about the potential impact of a pandemic.
"We have to have a response plan in place. You don't live assuming that's going to happen. What you do is you plan for that, so you can live without worrying about it unless it happens," she said.
Professor Bennett said the emergence of universal vaccines, which would have better coverage for more COVID-19 variants, would also ensure more certainty in the pandemic response.
Almost 30 per cent of new COVID-19 cases in the ACT attended a school campus last week, new data has shown.
There were 909 cases reported across 119 schools in the ACT in the second week of the school term, data from the Education Directorate showed.
More than 85 per cent of the ACT's COVID infections since the start of the pandemic in March 2020 have been reported since January 1.
The Omicron variant of COVID-19 has firmly established itself as the dominant strain in the ACT, but Delta cases continue to circulate in the community and result in hospital presentations, an epidemiological report prepared by health authorities said.
Ten people have been hospitalised with the Delta variant in the ACT since the start of December, with half of those people admitted in January.
However, of the 2.7 per cent of the ACT COVID-19 cases that had whole genome sequencing completed between January 1 and February 14, 99 per cent were the Omicron variant.
The ACT reported 455 new cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday, while there were 49 people in ACT hospitals with COVID-19 at 8pm on Monday. There were four people in intensive care, where two required ventilation support.
An ACT government spokeswoman said the latest internal Canberra Health Services modelling was predicting between 34 and 63 people with COVID-19 would need hospitalisation, including up to four patients in intensive care.
"The current number of hospitalisations with COVID-19 is within the confidence intervals of our modelling. The modelling predicts a slow and steady decline of hospitalisations in coming weeks. It is important to note that patients with COVID-19 are not always in hospital because of COVID-19," the spokeswoman said.
The territory has now marked 12 days with 500 or fewer daily cases of COVID-19, after what health authorities last week described as gradual decline.
"There were 2866 cases reported between January 31 and February 6, 2022, a reduction of over 40 per cent from the previous week," the government's latest weekly epidemiological report said.
The spokeswoman said the current seven-day rolling average of case numbers was "within the confidence of internal [Canberra Health Services] modelling".
Professor Adrian Esterman, who holds the chair in biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of South Australia, said the ACT could drive down the number of COVID-19 cases in the community by reinstating more public health restrictions, but it was a pay off between business interests and imposing tougher restrictions.
The effective reproduction rate of COVID-19 in the ACT - the average number of people each case infects - had hovered between 1.00 and 1.11 over the last four days, Professor Esterman said.
"It tells me that things have either plateaued or they're going to go up, unless something else changes," he said.
Professor Esterman said the next major shift in the pandemic situation would be the emergence of a new variant, which was a matter of when not if.
Patients in Canberra hospitals and health facilities will be able to receive two visitors a day from Wednesday, as health authorities moved to slightly ease restrictions. Visitors to high-risk clinical areas will still need exemptions.
One visitor at a time for patients will be allowed at most facilities. Women admitted for care related to birthing will be able to have two support people. However, only one support person may attend the operating theatre for caesarean sections.
Both parents or carers of young people will be able to attend together, with one permitted to stay overnight.
Compassionate exemptions would be considered on a case-by-case basis and children under five should avoid visiting health facilities, ACT Health said in a statement.
with Sarah Lansdown, Alex Crowe
