The number of known COVID-related deaths in the ACT has jumped by almost 40 per cent, after health authorities undertook an audit of death certificates in the territory.
It means the number of COVID-related deaths in the territory is now 224 after 61 historical deaths were added to the total. All the additional deaths occurred in 2022.
ACT chief health officer Kerryn Coleman said the information helped to provide a complete picture of deaths related to COVID in the territory but did not provide any new information about the virus.
She said she was confident that had the deaths been known at the time it would have not changed the territory's response to COVID.
"I'm really really confident that this additional information would not have changed our response in any way," Dr Coleman said.
"The data is absolutely consistent with the data we were receiving through the personal and organisational notification process. It's also consistent with what we've seen in other jurisdictions and nationally."
A majority of the newly-identified deaths, 36, occurred in aged care facilities. Eleven people died at home, 10 died in a public hospital and four died in a palliative care facility.
The median age of those who died was 86, and the ages ranged from 68 to 102. Sixty per cent of the deaths were men.
Most of the deaths occurred in June and July last year. There were 12 deaths in each month.
It was never mandatory to report COVID-related deaths to ACT Health, however, authorities requested aged care homes, public and private hospitals and the ACT Coroner's Court report deaths to ensure timely access to information.
But health officials said this was a manual process and was resource intensive, which likely contributed to the under-reporting.
"Previously during COVID until the end of 2022 it was really important that we got the COVID-related death data as quickly as we possibly could," Dr Coleman said.
"However, we know that's not troublesome free and we certainly expected that there were deaths we had missed.
"So we have undergone an audit, or a quality assurance process, where we sought all deaths, notifications from births, deaths and marriages and have done a reconciliation process."
Going forward ACT Health will only report deaths once they have been certified through the ACT Births Deaths and Marriages Registry but this will mean there will be delays in reporting COVID-related deaths.
Other states across Australia have undergone similar processes.
A COVID-related death is reported if the person dies with the virus, it could be listed as one of multiple reasons for death on a certificate.
There were six new COVID-related deaths reported this week in Canberra, including a man in his 90s, two men in their 80s, a man in his 70s, a woman in her 70s and a man in his 50s.
There were 487 new COVID cases reported in the territory this week. As of 4pm on Thursday there were 10 people in Canberra hospitals who had an active case of COVID.
Dr Coleman said while there were low levels of COVID in the community at present, the pandemic had not gone away.
"We can expect to see further waves into the future," she said.
"We're really well positioned to be able to respond to those."
The ACT is the only jurisdiction that still has a mandatory requirement for people to report positive rapid antigen test results. Dr Coleman said there were discussions with government about when to stop that.
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Note: This article has been updated to say the increase is more than 40 per cent
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