Premier Daniel Andrews has given his strongest indication yet that any changes in regional Victoria are still some time away.
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Speaking in his daily press conference on Thursday, Mr Andrews insisted it was too early for any changes to be made in the regions in the near future.
He also stressed that when rules were eased, they were unlikely to allow masses of people to congregate indoors.
There has not been a new COVID-19 cases in Ballarat for 38 days and the last active case was cleared more than three weeks ago.
Mr Andrews' comments follow a push from Ballarat's business community, as well as the Committee of Ballarat, to start the easing of restrictions as soon as possible.
"There may come a time, in a few weeks' time, to be able to take some further steps," Mr Andrews said.
"With the greatest of respect to those businesses...it's a bit too early for us to do that now.
"I would just caution against any great expectations we can go from 20 people inside to 50 or 100. We know indoor settings are 20 times more dangerous.
"But we may be able to do more in other areas."
There have been just four new COVID-19 cases confirmed in Victoria in the last two weeks, but these were all traced to close contacts.
None were deemed as mystery cases.
Mr Andrews said the impacts of moving to the 'third step', which happened 15 days ago, still needed to ba analysed.
"We're certainly looking at whether there are further steps that could be taken in regional Victoria but they have to be safe," he said.
"We've talked often about that two-to-three week cycle to know what the impact of the decisions you've made back then are.
"As every day goes past that's a validation of the decisions we made some time ago."
Meanwhile, wastewater testing in Anglesea has uncovered a second positive test for coronavirus, which experts say suggests it is a person living, or holidaying, locally.
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