VICTORIA'S COVID response commander Jeroen Weimar has admitted Mildura's chances of being released from its seven-day lockdown at 11.59pm on Friday night remain "line-ball".
As Victoria's daily COVID-19 tally cracked 2000 new cases for the first time on Thursday, Mildura recorded another 23 new cases, with 157 cases now active in the local government area.
The active cases were spread across 88 households, with an average age of 27.
Mr Weimar said the State Government would hold a series of reviews with Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton on Thursday night and Friday morning before making a decision on whether Mildura's lockdown would end as scheduled.
"I hate to leave it so late but if I am honest we would love to be in a position to see the numbers coming down, certainly to low numbers, but at this point we are not quite seeing that yet," Mr Weimar said.
"Brett Sutton will be very keen to see what the numbers are like again in the morning."
But Mr Weimar said the government was not expecting to get back to zero cases in Mildura before reopening.
"We are not on some mission to get back to zero cases to open up ... but there are a number of factors at play," he said.
"We don't have the answers now. I think for tonight I'm afraid it is a line-ball call still and we will see how we go."
Across the river, there was one new case in Dareton – the only new case in the Far West Local Health District – taking the town to a total of 18 active cases.
One new case was reported in Robinvale, the town's only known active case, while Swan Hill had 13 active cases after three new ones were recorded.
According to Mr Weimar, the new cases in the Mallee "all linked into a number of communities and including into agricultural workers".
He also applauded the work of hospital, health and community service workers in Sunraysia.
"I had the opportunity over Monday and Tuesday to work with our teams in Mildura, Robinvale and Swan Hill," he said.
"I'd like to give a particular shout-out to the teams at MDAS and at MVAC for the phenomenal work they're doing to support their community members who are living with COVID and trying to avoid COVID spreading further in their communities.
"The amount of work those people are doing around volunteering, providing food and welfare relief, ensuring people can isolate as safely as possible, is truly inspirational."
The cases in the Mallee were among 170 new cases recorded in regional Victoria on Friday as the state's number of new infections skyrocketed to 2297 – the first time daily case numbers had tipped over 2000 in any Australian state or territory.
It marked a jump of more than 700 from Wednesday's figure of 1571 new cases.
Victoria is now dealing with more than 20,000 active cases of COVID-19 and another 11 deaths reported on Friday took the state's COVID-19 death toll to 125 from the current outbreak. Overall, 945 Victorians have lost their lives to the virus.
Thursday's shocking high case numbers fitted within Burnet Institute modelling, released in September, which predicted Victoria would peak at between 1400 and 2900 daily cases between October 19 and 31, with a second peak likely to follow in December.
