Under the lockdown, residents of Canberra and its surrounding suburbs will only be allowed to leave home for essential reasons including essential work, healthcare, vaccine appointments, grocery shopping and one hour of exercise per day.

General retail will be closed and hospitality businesses will move to take away only.

Masks will be made mandatory in public spaces.

Any Territorians who visited an exposure site at the same time as the positive case have been ordered to isolate for 14 days.

“This will be the first time that the ACT has entered a lockdown of this nature since the early days of the pandemic,” said Barr.

Et mécht Canberra another major Australian city currently subject to a lockdown with strict restrictions also in place in Sydney and Melbourne.

“We know from what we are seeing around Australia that the Delta variant of the COVID-19 virus is highly infectious, and life threatening,” Barr said.

“For the sake of your health, your family’s health and for the health of the community – it’s critical that Canberrans take every precaution they can over the coming days.”