Andrews government must shift away from detailed daily updates, experts say

University of Melbourne public health expert Professor Nathan Grills said "we need to stop being obsessed with the daily case numbers".

He said as vaccination levels in the community get to a very high level the virus would become a much less potent public health threat. People would still be catching the virus, but it would be making them less sick.

"Once you open up you're inevitably going to have rising case numbers, but it probably won't be significant for public health," he said.

"It is time to pivot away from fear-based messaging."

Senior research fellow at the Centre for Advancing Journalism Dr Denis Muller said this pivot would have to be a delicate process. He said the state government obsession with daily case numbers had been an important tool to persuade Victorians to obey public health orders.

"I think there have been two narratives going for a while now. One is a narrative of hope and the other is a narrative of threat," Dr Muller said.

"For a long time the threat narrative had the upper hand, but as things unravelled in NSW that has changed."

Dr Muller said Gladys Berejiklian decided she needed to deflect some of the pressure as Sydney's Delta outbreak put hospitals under strain.

"Then you saw Berejiklian and Morrison start talking about new freedoms and light at the end of the tunnel, pushing the hope narrative."

"In Victoria when they realised that they couldn't get on top of the Delta outbreak they also started to pivot, but they have also kept the threat narrative going."

Dr Muller said Mr Andrews needed to pivot much more slowly than Ms Berejiklian for two reasons.

Firstly, Victoria is lagging NSW in its vaccine rollout and it can't let case numbers get out of control before vaccination levels are much higher.

Secondly, Dr Muller said Mr Andrews and his CHO Brett Sutton had "made a virtue of self sacrifice to stop the virus and a significant portion of the public has bought into that". If they suddenly started saying case numbers didn't matter it would be politically damaging for Andrews.

Professor Grills said the pivot needed to start now, even if it was gradual.

"Maybe you could release detailed numbers every second day and work towards weekly releases. You could do the same thing with the press conferences," he said.

"It won't be long before that sort of detailed daily focus on cases is no longer scientifically justified."

He said the media also played a role, and should start to give more emphasis to hospital capacity and deaths, rather than cases.

Dr Muller said the Victorian government's heavy use of the threat narrative had created a strong fear of the virus that would have to be dealt with when Mr Andrews lays out his roadmap out of lockdown on Sunday.

"The only way to get rid of the fear is to focus on vaccination rates and the relative safety they bring," he said, adding that opening back up would bring a level of risk, including deaths.

Dr Muller said it was politically fraught to talk about any death being acceptable, so Mr Andrews would have to frame this risk as an acceptable tradeoff for returning to a normal, or "COVID-normal" life.

"Listen closely because you may get a hint of this on Sunday," he said.

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