Victoria also recorded four COVID-19 deaths on Monday and at least three of these were unvaccinated people. This brings the number of lives lost in this outbreak to 29.

Victorian Health Minister Martin Foley said an illegal social gathering in the Latrobe Valley at the weekend was believed to be the cause of and outbreak of 12 new regional cases. He would not rule out locking down the area if the infections increased.

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Minister Foley confirmed an additional 140 cases were added to Monday's tally and nine to Sunday's due to a software error affecting one of the state's pathology providers. He said 149 positive cases "received their advice as per normal from those pathology providers".

"That software problem has been rectified ... and this, fortunately, did not have an impact on... the people concerned getting the test results," he said.

Meanwhile, a Ballarat Health Services spokesperson confirmed BHS had not been impacted by an overflow of metropolitan COVID patients into Geelong's public hospitals.

Geelong Advertiser reports about one-third of intensive care unit beds in Geelong's three major hospitals were being taken up by COVID patients from Melbourne. Barwon Health had been considering scaling back non-urgent admissions.

There are no COVID-positive patients in the BHS Base Hospital and all Ballarat COVID patients continue to been monitored via the BHS at Home program.

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