Rachel Stephen-Smith says to expect COVID health shortages as casual pool exhausted

Nurses have reported being under significant strain across Canberra's health system, with a push within some ranks to strike.

Modelling has indicated the ACT is in the midst of a COVID infection peak, with daily cases expected to remain around the 1000-mark over the next couple of weeks with a slow decline to happen after that.

ACT Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith has said this could change, particularly with the upcoming school holidays.

"At the moment we are projecting a relatively stable and slowly declining set of case numbers but also going into the school holidays that's going to change the dynamics in terms of the way that our communities are moving around," she said.

Hospitalisations due to COVID are expected to also remain stable over the coming weeks, with about 45 people, on average, expected to be admitted at any one time.

Ms Stephen-Smith said a common trend was that half the people hospitalised with COVID were actually classified as recovered cases but still receiving treatment due to virus-related reasons.

While hospitalisations due to coronavirus are expected to remain steady the health system is still under extreme pressure due to COVID-related staff absences.

There were currently 168 health care workers, across the public and private system, in isolation due to COVID-19.

Ms Stephen-Smith said the number of workers out at any one time had hovered around the 150-160 mark over the past few months.

She also said more than 3000 health care workers had been in quarantine.

"The cumulative impact over a period of time on our hospital system has been really significant and we absolutely recognise that this is creating workload pressures for the other staff who are picking up extra shifts or who are working on wards where they are short-staffed," Ms Stephen-Smith said.

"Talking to Canberra Health Services the other day, they had tapped out every source of staff [from the] casual pool, as many agency staff as they could possibly access and they were still experiencing these workload pressures."

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The Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation ACT branch secretary Matthew Daniel on Wednesday said health staff had been pushed to their limits due to staffing shortages.

"Our nurses and midwives are asking us when they can strike, when they can go out," Mr Daniel said.

"They are sick of the understaffing, which has occurred way before COVID, and they need the government to take action to relieve the pressure.

"We don't see a recovery plan. We don't see any immediate relief."

Ms Stephen-Smith said the workforce shortages were exacerbated due to demand. She said a lot of pressure was in the emergency department where presentations had been higher than average.

She said on Monday there were 311 presentations, well above the average of about 250 per day.

Ms Stephen-Smith urged people to consider whether they could receive treatment elsewhere, like a general practitioner or a nurse-led walk-in centre.

"Our emergency department presentations are a mix of different acuity levels, but on Monday we saw the resuscitation bays in use throughout the day," she said.

"But we also saw people presenting with less urgent care needs that maybe could have been taken care of at a general practitioner or at one of our walk-in centres."

There were 1094 new COVID-19 cases reported in Canberra on Thursday. There were 49 people in Canberra hospitals with the virus in the 24 hours to 8pm on Wednesday, including three people in intensive care and two under ventilation.

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