COVID hospitalisations in Canberra are at a record high as workforce shortages continue to plague the ACT's health system, with exhaustion and burnout causing experienced staff to leave high-pressure hospital settings.
Schools are also continuing to face the pinch, with a number public schools moving some students to remote learning as staffing shortages make face-to-face teaching unviable.
Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith said the public health system was under a huge amount of pressure for multiple reasons, including COVID-related staff absences, other illnesses and workforce shortages.
There were 76 people in Canberra hospitals with COVID-19 in the latest reporting period, including four people in intensive care and two who required ventilation.
There were also two COVID deaths in the ACT, with a man in his 70s and a woman in her 90s dying with the virus. The ACT reported 1242 new COVID cases.
Canberra's health system has come under enormous pressure over recent months due to workforce shortages.
"Obviously we do have a record number of COVID-19 patients in hospital, but we also have still significant workforce impact from people who have COVID, who are close contacts of people who have COVID, who have caring responsibilities," Ms Stephen-Smith said.
"We're already starting to see influenza in our community; we're seeing other winter illnesses starting to impact our staffing as well."
There were 135 workers in isolation in the ACT's public hospitals on Wednesday.
Ms Stephen-Smith also revealed that a number of exhausted experienced health workers had left high-pressure areas across the system, including the intensive care unit and emergency department.
"We've also seen an impact of people who have been really exhausted over the last couple of years, and so we're seeing experienced staff moving out of those hospital settings and that's also had a workforce impact," she said.
The staffing pressures could force walk-in centres to shut temporarily so staff can be diverted to help ease the pressure in the hospital.
Elective surgery is continuing, but Ms Stephen-Smith said there could be instances where some surgeries were postponed as the shortages also meant some theatres were closed.
"We are constantly keeping an eye on things like elective surgery - we're not actually postponing any elective surgery as a result of COVID at this point, but there will be individuals whose surgery is not able to go ahead because there is emergency surgery that's taking priority," she said.
Ms Stephen-Smith said winter planning was continuing, as staff shortages could worsen due to influenza also spreading in the community.
She said while there were public health measures that could be implemented, the high rate of COVID in the community meant they would not go a significant way towards addressing the workforce shortages.
