Page 2035 - Week 07 - Thursday, 20 August 2020
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I sincerely thank the ACT community for their continued efforts to stop the spread. Your efforts have been outstanding and continue to play a vital role in flattening the curve and keeping the ACT in a position where we have no active cases of COVID-19.
It is in all our interests to keep our community free of COVID-19 to the greatest extent possible so that we can continue on our path to recovery and protect our most vulnerable community members. As a community and as individuals we each play an important role.
Madam Speaker, the ACT remains in a strong position. On this front, I am pleased to advise that it has been more than four weeks since the last COVID-19 case was detected in the ACT and three weeks since we had an active infection. In addition, the ACT’s testing numbers remain consistently high, with more than 67,000 negative tests conducted as at 19 August 2020.
I also thank the community for continuing to come forward and get tested when experiencing symptoms. Testing remains a vitally important measure in identifying new cases in our community and enabling our disease detectives to respond quickly with case investigation and contact tracing.
But we remain vigilant as we closely monitor the situations in Victoria and New South Wales and manage the risks that these outbreaks present to the territory and our residents. As experiences in Victoria, New South Wales and, lately, New Zealand demonstrate, outbreaks can happen without warning and rapidly spread even with decisive action.
Madam Speaker, the government continues to place the health and safety of Canberrans first in order to prevent and detect any new cases in our community. This includes learning the lessons from other jurisdictions. Our public health specialists are working closely with stakeholders to support and build the capability of the residential aged care sector to prepare for and respond to a COVID-19 outbreak.
We are also working collaboratively with the commonwealth government in support of actions to increase responsiveness and preparedness in aged-care settings. Indeed, the government is constantly reviewing our situation and ensuring we are in the best position to respond to this ongoing emergency.
We have recently seen the benefits of interoperable contact tracing systems that allow support to be provided across jurisdictions. This gives our public health officials the best opportunity to work together to tackle any new outbreaks or resurgence. This is why the government will invest $7.5 million to implement the Maven disease response management system in the ACT over the next six months. This will significantly strengthen our COVID-19 response and align our system with those of New South Wales and Victoria, providing the ability to work closely with larger jurisdictions and support the excellent work of the Chief Health Officer’s team.
Madam Speaker, yesterday I signed a notifiable instrument to extend the ACT’s public health emergency declaration in response to COVID-19 for a further 90 days
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