Patients from Canberra Hospital are being moved to private hospitals and aged care facilities to free up more beds as the city's health system struggles with the latest COVID wave.
There were 170 people with COVID-19 in hospital in the 24 hours to Monday 8pm. That's one short of the record set a day earlier.
There are six patients in the ICU and three of those are on ventilation.
Canberra Health Services chief operating officer Cathie O'Neill said the organisation was in the process of moving about 70 patients who no longer needed acute care into private hospitals and aged care facilities to free up beds at the hospital.
"These patients are patients who have finished their acute care episodes so they no longer need to be in a hospital but they still need some care, they might be recuperating or they might still be working through the process of an admission to an aged care facility," she said.
"We've been working with our partner hospitals to transition some of these patients to be cared for by them while we finish some of those processes and it just means it will free up further beds for the acute patients that we need here."
Authorities have been warning of bed block issues for some time, including when hospitalisation rates were about half the level they are now.
Hospitals are facing not just the spike in COVID cases, but also in other illnesses. Those illnesses are also affecting staff, adding to the pressure on the system.
The pressure on ACT hospitals is unlikely to ease by the end of winter and Ms O'Neil has previously said bed blocks are happening "every day with a large number of patients requiring longer hospital stays".
Canberra Health Services have repeatedly urged people with non-life threatening injuries to avoid the emergency department and seek care elsewhere.
The Canberra Liberals are calling on the government to explain how it plans to deal with the escalating situation in the territory's hospitals.
Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith said high COVID case numbers coupled with other respiratory illnesses and unplanned staff leave was creating real pressure for the workforce and it was expected to continue throughout winter.
"This for the ACT is the worst time of the pandemic," she said.
Opposition health spokeswoman Leanne Castley also questioned whether the government would use the Garran Surge Centre to treat COVID patients. The temporary $23 million centre was built at the start of the pandemic. It has been used as a walk-in centre for COVID-positive people since January
"We have a $23 million centre being used to provide advice to COVID-19 patients about how to manage their symptoms and to treat cuts and abrasions," she said.
The centre was originally designed to be a COVID emergency department and Ms Stephen-Smith said it would be hard to staff another department.
"Obviously to staff a separate emergency department we would need a whole lot of new staffing to go into a third emergency department in the ACT and one of the challenges we're facing at the moment is staffing shortages because of the impacts of respiratory illness and other responsibilities and illnesses across the ACT, including in our emergency departments," Ms Stephen-Smith said.
"We know that expanding the size of emergency departments often actually encourages more people to come to emergency departments."
Canberra Health Services said options for those who need urgent but non-life-threatening care included: access to walk-in centres, GPs, Healthdirect on 1800 022 222, CALMS on 1300 422 567 or the National Home Doctor Service on 13 74 25.
