Coronavirus: ACT to more than treble number of ICU beds

Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith said the ACT had set a target for 170 intensive care unit beds, there are currently 50 in the territory.

"Nationally we are looking to have an ICU capacity of 7000 beds, what that means for the ACT is ICU capacity of about 170 beds," she said.

"Our planning is well on target to get us to and above that number."

Canberra Health Services chief executive Bernadette McDonald said talks were underway between clinicians in both the private and public system.

"We have bought together our lead clinicians across each of our intensive care sites, both public and private to talk about how we can plan to increase capacity," she said.

"We can double by re-purposing different machines, anesthetic machines and actually extending into space outside of our ICU footprint across all of our organisations."

It came as the ACT recorded one new case of COVID-19 on Tuesday, bringing the territory's total number of cases to 97.

The new cases is a woman is in her 70s, who is a close contact linked of a previously confirmed case.

Six patients are in Canberra hospitals and three of those are in intensive care.

There have been almost 5500 negative tests in the ACT.

There are still two cases in the ACT where a source of transmission had not been determined.

Acting chief health officer Dr Vanessa Johnston said one of the cases would likely not be finalised until next week and an update on the other case was expected on Wednesday.

ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr said the territory was well placed but said winter would be a challenge and urged Canberrans to maintain social distancing.

"If we all get sick at the same time our health system will simply not be able to cope," he said.

"We are doing well in Canberra, we have flattened the curve but we are only in the first few weeks of our response. There is a long way to go. Locally, our short-term objective would be to get through the winter period."

Meanwhile, police are taking a "staged" approach to breaches of the COVID-19 health directions after being called to a number of reports at people's houses across Canberra over the weekend.

The new directions present a difficult situation for ACT police which for decades has fostered a community policing relationship supported by messaging such as "see something, say something".

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In NSW and Victoria, police are actively fining those who breach the health directions as a not-so-veiled approach to enforcement.

However, in the ACT, Chief Police Officer Ray Johnson hasn't been as quick to act.

"Over the weekend, police were called to a number of reports of parties at people's houses. In a few instances the number of people in the house met health directions, but we still encouraged people to go home and they quickly complied," he said.

Assistant Commissioner Johnson said it was "fair and right" that police should continue to "educate people and encourage compliance first before moving to warnings and fines".

Chief Minister Andrew Barr said that a 1800 freecall reporting line is being set up and should be announced soon.

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