Rules to ease in regional Victoria from tonight

At 11.59pm tonight regional Victoria will move to a more relaxed set of rules as Melbourne remains in the tight lockdown for the next seven days.

Explainer: What are the new rules for regional Victoria?

Victorian Acting Premier James Merlino said it was great news for the regions.

"The Chief Health Officer has confirmed that the easing of regional restrictions will occur as planned tonight," he said.

"That means lifting the stay-at-home and travel restrictions; all year levels and students will return to face-to-face schooling, public gatherings will be increased to 10 people, restaurants and cafes can open to a maximum of 50 and retail, beauty and personal care, entertainment venues and community facilities will open in line with density limits.

"Religious ceremonies and funerals will be capped at 50, weddings at 10, with work or study from home if you can and offices capped at 50 per cent.

"Some things will not change, as we talked about yesterday. Visitors to the home are still not okay and we still need masks worn inside."

Minister Merlino said there would be increased police activity across the regions to ensure Melburnians aren't traveling unlawfully.

"We're talking about is significantly increased number of police patrols along all of our arterial routes 24 hours a day seven days a week, as well as spotchecks in regional Victoria," he said.

"From Victoria Polices' point of view and we agree, as does public health, this is a more effective way to deal with it rather than having a ring of steel which is very resource intensive and quite limited in terms of the locations where you can have police based statically rather than being very mobile.

"There is a suite of enforcement arrangements and fines that can be issued.

"We cannot afford to let this outbreak let loose in Victoria and beyond our state borders."

Mr Merlino said it was time the federal government came to the table with income support for Victorian workers.

The federal government responded on Thursday afternoon and is offering a temporary COVID-19 disaster payment of up to $500 for workers adversely affected by Victoria's extended lockdown.

Minister Merlino said additional support for regional businesses would be unveiled in the coming days.

"I have already outlined in coming days we will respond to the real challenge for regional tourism and accommodation providers, we'll come back with even more support," he said.

"Business support is a direct responsibility of the state government and whether it is last year, or the half a billion dollars of support for this particular outbreak, we are meeting our responsibility.

"In terms of income support for workers, Victorian workers during this outbreak, that is a responsibility of the federal government.

"I would be disappointed if we see yet another responsibility that is solely with the Commonwealth and the Commonwealth walking away from that. That would disappoint me."

He would not be drawn on what his conversation with Prime Minister Scott Morrison last night entailed, but said the Commonwealth needs to give the "tick on the site and tick on the funding" for a purpose-built quarantine facility for Victoria.

"Hotels are purpose-built for tourists," he said. "We need to have the highest risk individuals going to a purpose-built facility."

Liberal Member for Western Victoria Beverley McArthur has been slammed by the acting premier for campaigning against the federal government giving Victoria assistance.

The upper house MP on Thursday took to Twitter to criticise Victoria's fourth lockdown and said the federal government shouldn't "cave" to the pleas of the Victorian government.

"If the federal government does cave to the demands of Tim Pallas, every single dollar that it costs federal taxpayers should be deducted from Victoria's GST allocation," she said.

"This lockdown must end, the Commonwealth chequebook must close, and Victorian Government ministers must resign."

Minister Merlino said the comments were 'disgraceful'.

"I think that is disgraceful and if you talk to any Victorian business, any Victorian worker who are so disadvantaged, devastated by the lockdown that we must enter into, they would be appalled that anyone, anyone would be advocating to the federal government to ignore the needs of Victorian workers," he said on Thursday.

"We've got a responsibility to make our community safe and to make sure that people don't get sick and people don't die.

"That is our responsibility and we won't walk away from that and it's frankly insulting for anyone to suggest that any state or territory would choose to enter into a lockdown period to combat this virus."

The post prompted an onslaught of reactions online:

Deputy Chief Health Officer Allen Cheng says there are now only three cases in Victoria that haven't been linked; the initial case, the first case in aged care and the Victorian family who travelled to NSW.

However today's cases are not of great concern.

"There were three new locally-acquired cases in Victoria that were diagnosed yesterday," he said. "All were primary close contacts of previously identified positive cases and all were quarantining and in isolation for the entire infectious period, so there are no new exposure sites related to those cases."

Repeat wastewater testing in Bendigo returned negative samples, but the community is still encouraged to come forward for testing if symptoms present.

Mr Cheng said the Kappa and Alpha strains of the virus are "probably 50 per cent more infectious" than the virus strain Victoria faced last year.

"It is more infectious in the sense that more people get infected for every case," he said.

"We've only been going just over a week, think it's been 10 days since we found the first case and one case has been in intensive care, another case has been in hospital.

"We always need to be prepared and have plans in case things don't go the way we want."

Earlier, 9am:

Regional Victorians will learn on Thursday if the "circuit breaker" lockdown will end after the state recorded two new locally acquired cases overnight.

The third case was announced late yesterday and was a 90-year-old resident from the Maidstone Acare facility.

It has not yet been announced where the other two cases are located.

While Melbourne must stay under stay-at-home orders for at least seven more days, Acting Premier James Merlino said "circuit breaker" restrictions would ease for regional Victoria if it stayed virus-free.

Victoria had another record day of testing, with 57,519 in the 24 hours to midnight on Wednesday.

If regional areas come out of lockdown, it would mean the removal of the five reasons to leave home, retail businesses reopening, and hospitality venues operating as seated service only.

Explainer: What are the proposed new rules for regional Victoria?

COVID-19 has been detected in wastewater at Bendigo and Axedale, and there are exposure sites at Anglesea, Axedale, Glenrowan, Kalkallo, Wallan and Rye.

But none of the 60 cases linked to the current outbreak up to Wednesday had come from regional Victoria, earning it a likely lockdown reprieve just before midnight on Thursday.

The so-called "ring of steel", used last year to enforce the regional divide, will be replaced by roving police patrols.

Instead, the onus will be on regional businesses checking the IDs of customers, while Service Victoria QR code check-ins will become mandatory statewide in retail settings such as supermarkets.

The Victorian government has used evidence of the Indian variant being quicker and more contagious to justify Melbourne remaining in lockdown until 11.59pm on June 10.

"If we let this thing run its course, it will explode," Mr Merlino said.

"We've got to run this to ground because if we don't, people will die."

Professor Sutton said about 10 per cent of current cases caught the virus through "fleeting exchanges" with infected people.

There has been plenty of debate about the state government's comments on the nature of this outbreak, with some health experts doubting the virus strain is unusually contagious.

IN OTHER NEWS

Prof Sutton has "great confidence" restrictions will be eased at the end of the week but travel will still not be allowed from Melbourne to regional areas over the Queen's Birthday long weekend.

There are now 370 exposure sites listed on the health department's website, with several suburban bus routes from May 25-28 added on Wednesday night.

Thursday's figures are expected to include a second resident at aged care facility Arcare Maidstone who was taken to hospital after testing positive.

Arcare chief executive Colin Singh said the 89-year-old man was a cousin of the first COVID-infected resident and lived in an adjacent room.

Federal Aged Care Services Minister Richard Colbeck told a Senate estimates hearing the man initially returned an inconclusive result and had been fully vaccinated.

It takes the Arcare Maidstone outbreak to four cases, including two residents and two workers.

Fellow residents and staff members remain in self-isolation, with more testing planned for Thursday.

Meanwhile, federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg again said on Thursday morning that he will consider Victoria's request for worker support from Canberra as the lockdown continues.

He added a Commonwealth decision on Victoria's proposal for a purpose-built quarantine facility will also be made soon.

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