Victoria has recorded its highest daily death toll on Monday with 41 deaths, however the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed 33 of the 41 died in the weeks leading up to August 27 and were reported by aged care facilities on Sunday after investigations were completed.
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There have been eight deaths in the past 24 hours and the state's death toll now sits at 565.
Premier Daniel Andrews confirmed 73 new cases of coronavirus were detected in the past 24 hours, bringing the state's current active cases total to 2620 with the total number since the beginning of the pandemic at 19,080.
The premier announced Victoria's roadmap to 'COVID Normal' to guide the state out of stage 3 and 4 lockdown measures will be released on Sunday, September 6.
Ahead of this release, the government will commence an intensive round of discussions with industry, unions and community organisations to inform the final development of the roadmap.
Physical distancing, including density and working from home measures will be a feature of the roadmap as will wearing face coverings in high-risk workplaces. Hygiene measures will continue to play a role and so will enacting strict work policies if a worker is sick.
The premier said wherever possible, workforce bubbles should be created to limit the number of staff who have prolonged and close contact with each other.
Mr Andrews confirmed stage 2 would look strikingly different to the previous June-July stage.
"I am so proud of every Victorian doing the right thing," Mr Andrews said.
"We will defeat this second wave if we do it properly, and we will, with a phased, appropriate and steady opening, then we will avoid a third wave.
"We know every Victorian wants certainty about the future - for them, for their family and for their work. By the end of the week, we will lay out a plan to re-open our state.
"Workplaces will need to look very different as we find our 'COVID Normal'. By working with business we'll make sure that can happen practically and safely."
There are 453 Victorians in hospital, 21 people are in intensive care and 13 of those are on a ventilator.
There are 4338 cases with an unknown source, an increase of 112 since yesterday.
The regional-metro spilt showed there are 154 active cases in regional Victoria, a number which continues to drop. Greater Geelong detected one new cases overnight with 50 current active cases. Greater Bendigo and Greater Ballarat recorded no new cases overnight bringing their current cases to nine and six respectively.
Mr Andrews said a total of 2,248,814 test results received an increase of 14,435 overnight.
The number of active cases in health care workers in 378.
Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton revealed the confusion surrounding the number of deaths is due to a lag of about three weeks in reporting.
Investigations in recent weeks into a number of deaths in aged care resulted in 33 deaths being reclassified with the cause of death was confirmed to be coronavirus.
"These are deaths that have happened over previous weeks including going back to late July," Professor Sutton said.
"There are Commonwealth reporting obligations and there are state reporting processors and we need to reconcile those cases so that whatever the Victorian Aged Care Response (VARC) Centre is reporting is absolutely consistent.
"The Commonwealth strengthened the reporting obligations in early August based on the need for the VARC to have absolutely definitive data of deaths that occurred in residents that have coronavirus.
"Some of those have now caught up."
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