According to ACT Health’s most recent weekly epidemiological report, 20 residential aged care facilities had active COVID-19 outbreaks in the last week. Photo: File.
The ACT has reported the death of a woman in her 90s and 859 new COVID-19 infections in the 24 hours to 8 pm last night and the number of cases continues to rise in residential aged care facilities across the Territory.
According to ACT Health’s most recent weekly epidemiological report, which covered the period of Monday, 9 May to Sunday, 15 May, there were 20 facilities with active outbreaks of COVID-19 throughout the week and 63 cases of COVID-19 were reported in residents across these facilities.
This is up on the previous week’s total of 16 outbreaks and 59 cases.
Earlier this week, the health directorate revealed almost 40 per cent of all pandemic-related deaths so far had occurred at residential aged care facilities.
Across the country, as of 19 May 2022, there were 6424 active COVID-19 cases in 825 residential aged care facilities. Of these, 3976 cases were residents and 2448 were staff.
A total of 2446 aged care facilities have had an outbreak since the pandemic began and 42,975 cases have been recorded in residents.
Since March 2020, more than 2400 people have died with COVID-19 in an aged care facility. Just over 1500 of these occurred this year, compared to 686 in 2020 and 231 in 2021.
Around 60 people are dying with COVID-19 in aged care facilities every week.
During the week covered by Health’s report, 7267 cases of COVID-19 were reported in the ACT compared to 6629 in the previous week.
The Territory’s first two cases of the BA.2.12.1 subvariant were detected in the ACT during the last reporting period. Both cases were identified in the one family group who had recently returned from overseas. The first case of the BA.5 subvariant was detected in the previous reporting period.
Overall, PCR tests increased in the week, but the rolling mean of cases remained stable between 850 and 950 cases a day.
Case numbers continued to rise in school-aged children.
Throughout the week, 30 people were admitted to hospital with COVID-19 and two cases were admitted to the ICU. This is a slight decrease from the previous week when 32 cases were admitted to hospital.
The 859 (441 PCR and 418 RAT) new cases reported in the ACT in the 24 hours to 8 pm last night take the total active cases to 6,008 (3,010 PCR and 2,998 RAT).
There have been a total of 123,665 infections recorded in the ACT.
Yesterday, 963 new infections were reported to ACT Health.
Today, there are 89 people in hospital with COVID, including 3 in ICU and 2 being ventilated.
As of yesterday, the double-dose vaccination rate for the ACT’s five-plus population was 97.2 per cent and 76.2 per cent of residents aged 16 and older had received a booster.
Of ACT residents aged five to 11, 67.4 per cent had received two doses of vaccine.
Interstate, NSW has reported 14 deaths overnight and 9,632 new cases of COVID-19.
Victoria has reported 21 deaths overnight and 11,925 cases of COVID-19.
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