Canberra lockdown: Andrew Barr warns of tough road ahead

But Chief Minister Andrew Barr has warned there is still a tough road ahead, saying it was too early to speculate on what restrictions will be in place next month.

The ACT recorded 12 new cases of COVID-19 on Friday, bringing the total number of active cases in Canberra to 94. Eleven were linked to existing cases.

Five cases remain under investigation, including the first case in the outbreak.

Chief health officer Dr Kerryn Coleman said a person was admitted to hospital with the virus on Friday morning but was in a stable condition

Mr Barr said it would be highly unlikely the ACT would be able to snap back to the same level of restrictions the territory enjoyed before the outbreak.

He indicated on Friday he wanted to get Canberra's vaccination rate up to about 70 or 80 per cent. Mr Barr also said he did not want to give false hope about the months ahead.

"I think one of the challenges that everyone is balancing at the moment is wanting to give hope about the future, and I understand that," he said.

"It's important the community knows that we're working towards something that will make a difference in everyone's day-to-day lives but not offering up false hope about what the future will look like.

"There's still a tough road ahead of us."

Mr Barr refused to speculate on whether Canberrans would be able to travel by the school holidays, starting on September 17.

He said Canberra's road map out of restrictions also depend on NSW getting its numbers down.

"In all of these circumstances, we will be supportive of whatever NSW can do to get their case numbers down because that has an impact on us ... also the rest of the country," Mr Barr said.

"The pathway for us and what the rest of this year looks like for the ACT and for other jurisdictions depends a lot on NSW being successful. I hope they are."

There are more than 20,000 close contacts and more than 5000 casual contacts linked to Canberra's exposure sites.

There are now more than 260 close and casual contact exposure sites, however, the number of new close contacts sites has started to slow.

Dr Coleman said she was "cautiously confident" the numbers would start to reflect the lockdown.

"These cases that we have been seeing are what we would be seeing if we had not locked down anyway," she said.

"Now is the time at which we start seeing the impact of the lockdown."

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Dr Coleman said the ACT would start to report the number of Covid cases which had been active in the community during the infectious period.

The ACT has so far not provided this information, unlike other jurisdictions, because almost all cases identified were active in the community prior to the start of lockdown.

Dr Coleman also warned it was likely more people would be hospitalised with the virus.

"I think we need to expect as our case numbers grow, that we will see people going into hospital and then a certain percentage of those will need to probably have intensive care support," she said.

"Once again, this is something that we've been working with the hospitals on, they have plans and they've had a timeline now to just re-energise those plans and get those things into place."

ACT Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith urged anyone with symptoms to come forward for testing, as pressure had alleviated across Canberra's testing sites.

Testing sites at both Erindale Active Leisure Centre and Gold Creek School have opened up to the broader community.

"The ramp up in sites and availability has been incredibly important and continues to be important," Ms Stephen-Smith said.

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