Victoria's COVID-19 Delta outbreak is shaping up to be a "pandemic of the unvaccinated", with the majority of patients hospitalised unvaccinated.
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Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews issued an urgent plea to the state to get vaccinated on Tuesday as he highlighted only 35 per cent of Victorians are fully inoculated.
Victoria has recorded 76 new coronavirus cases, with 45 infections linked to known COVID-19 outbreaks.
There are now 841 active cases of COVID-19 in the state and 31 of Tuesday's new cases are yet to be linked to existing outbreaks.
Of those, only 36 were in isolation for their infectious period.
Mr Andrews is expected to announce some changes to restrictions on Wednesday but he cautioned they would be only slight changes that were heavily dependent on low case numbers and vaccination thresholds.
The premier will meet with senior health officials on Tuesday to discuss what the thresholds for some 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.
"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."
More than 50,000 people were tested on Monday, with 32,162 vaccine doses administered. It marks an eight per cent jump in vaccine uptake over the week, with the weekend seeing a 20 per cent increase in the number of people getting the jab.
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.
Meanwhile, the number of COVID-19 patients in Melbourne hospitals is on the rise.
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There are 52 coronavirus cases in Victorian hospitals, with 16 in intensive care and 15 on ventilators.
The average age of Victorians in hospital is 49. More than half of the patients in hospital in Victoria are under the age of 40.
The 15 people on ventilators are aged between 38 and 72.
At least six people from Shepparton have been transferred to hospital in Melbourne.
But the stabilisation of figures led Chief Health officer Brett Sutton on Monday to say that a decision on easing restrictions could come within days.
Goulburn Valley Health chief executive Matt Sharp said at least six people from the Shepparton outbreak had been transferred to Melbourne, as it continues to care for four other infected patients.
"The Delta variant of the coronavirus is a really nasty virus," he told reporters.
"We're seeing people come into our emergency department that are critically unwell. Somewhat surprisingly their conditions at home are deteriorating really quickly."
Although all 99 cases in the region are currently linked, Mr Sharp stopped short of declaring the outbreak was fully contained after tallying a further nine infections on Monday.
"The only way we'll get this under control is to have a number of consecutive zero days," he said.
With 73 new cases in total reported on Monday, Chief Health Officer Brett 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.