The Premier Daniel Andrews is expected to announce some changes to COVID restrictions on Wednesday but he cautioned they would be only slight changes that were heavily dependent on low case numbers and vaccination thresholds.
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The premier will meet with senior health officials on Tuesday to discuss what the thresholds for opening up could look like but said nothing had been decided yet.
"We're looking at all manner of different we might be able to do," he said "but I do want to be very clear with the people of Victoria. This will not be freedom day. It will be modest changes that hopefully can be meaningful in people's lives.
"As much economic activity as is possible, but they will be very modest changes because there is no middle ground here."
Mr Andrews said he was pursuing the national plan but the major stumbling block remained the low vaccination rates.
"But the central fact of the national plan is this, you can manage a pandemic of the unvaccinated when the unvaccinated is a small group," he said.
He said if the state cannot achieve zero cases again, then "it will need to be a low number" before restrictions are eased.
"It cannot be in the hundreds because it won't be in the hundreds for long, it will race and get away from us," he said.
"If it is a big group and you open up and ease too much you don't have low numbers, you have very, very high numbers. And that translates to many people in hospital."
"Victoria and the nation has only 35% of people doubled dose covered stop 35%. Not 80% vaccinated, 30% vaccinated.
"The notion of trying to cope with a pandemic when you are open, with very few rules, when so few people are vaccinated, we know what that would mean. We know it may not hundreds of cases, but thousands of cases," he said.
"You either aim for very low numbers or you will, in fact, have very high numbers. That's the simplest way I can put it.
Victoria has recorded 76 new coronavirus cases, with 45 infections linked to known COVID-19 outbreaks.
The state's exposure site list has jumped over 1000, with nearly 150 new sites added in the past day including several train lines and a Port Melbourne construction site where a new primary school is being built.
But the good news is the nine new cases in Shepparton were all in quarantine.
Mr Andrews said the work being done in Shepparton on 13 day testing of quarantine cases would point the way to how clearly they had got on top of the regional Victoria outbreak.
"There is not a lot of virus out there that we know about," he said. "[This] may give us the options of moving further and faster in regional Victoria."
Meanwhile, the number of COVID-19 patients in Melbourne hospitals is on the rise.
There were 49 coronavirus cases in Victorian hospitals on Monday, an increase of five from the previous day, with 15 in intensive care and 11 on ventilators.
At least six people from Shepparton have been transferred to hospital in Melbourne.
Lower coronavirus death rates have been used to show the power of vaccination as Australia prepares for a cautious road to reopening.
Austin Health's Director of Intensive Care Dr Stephen Warrilow stressed the importance of vaccination as a key to protecting the population from the debilitating virus.
Dr Warrilow said those who have been vaccinated may be unlucky enough to get the disease but there were no cases of those who were vaccinated becoming critically ill.
By contrast his ICU units were often hit by the cases who had no protection through the jab.
"This is a disease of the unvaccinated," Dr Warrilow said. "If you are fully vaccinated you may still be unlucky enough to get COVID but you are not going to become critically ill, you are not going to die and you will not need intensive care support."
Dr Warrillow said if ICU staff were overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients, it would impact their ability to treat others, including those who need major heart or cancer surgery.
"(The team) are tired. They are incredibly resilient and their dedication is humbling, but there is a finite amount of time that people can keep this up," he said.
"What we don't want to do is get overwhelmed with an influx of admissions requiring intensive care support that we have to change our model of care to something that isn't the gold standard," he said. "We have got plans as to how we would do it, and how we would do it as safely as we possibly can, but those are decisions that I don't want my team to have to make."
Meanwhile the Prime Minister is spruiking the lower death rate in NSW as proof the federal cabinet's roadmap out of lockdown though vaccinations is the best way forward.
Mr Morrison said there was a 0.5 per cent fatality rate during the ongoing NSW outbreak, compared with 4.3 per cent at the peak of Victoria's second wave last year.
"Vaccination has a major impact," he said on Tuesday after another three deaths were recorded in NSW.
"You double that second-dose rate from where it is now and that's a level of protection that is really giving us an ability to safely transition to the next phase."
Premiers and chief ministers have been at odds with the federal government on a national agreement to gradually reopen when 70 and 80 per cent vaccination coverage is reached.
Mr Morrison insists major lockdowns will cause more harm than good at the higher threshold.
"This is a safe plan. This isn't some sort of freedom day," he said. "There's no magic in a calendar but there is a confidence you can have in the medical science that has gone into this plan.
"Between 70 and 80 you've got to be careful. Once you hit 70, you can't just sort of go open slather - no one is suggesting that."
EARLIER
On Monday the stabilisation of figures also led Victorian Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton on Monday to say that a decision on easing restrictions could come within days.
IN OTHER NEWS
With 73 new cases in total reported on Monday, Professor Sutton said the state's number of cumulative days with 50 infections or more was "relatively flat compared to how it took off in NSW".
"We are hoping to see a trend, and maybe it's stabilising over the last few days," he said.
Health Minister Foley similarly hoped the outbreak had "plateaued" and said there was "every indication" the public health rules were starting to work, despite at least 49 new cases spending time in the community while infectious.
There are now more than 970 exposure sites across the state, including a ward at Dandenong Hospital, a school in Melbourne's north and a Shepparton hairdresser.
A decision on how long the state's sixth lockdown will be extended is set to be announced in coming days.
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