Young boy in hotel quarantine tests positive to COVID-19, community remains virus-free

Among those arrivals are the six positive cases, 24 symptomatic people and 44 others who are deemed 'complex care' patients due to other medical needs.

Both symptomatic passengers and complex care patients are being housed on separate floors at the Novotel in South Wharf while a ventilation issue is addressed at Melbourne's second 'hot' hotel - the Holiday Inn.

Police Minister Lisa Neville said authorities were working to ensure that any recirculated air in rooms at the 'hot' hotels remained isolated.

"There is no shared air between rooms or between common areas," she said.

Ms Neville said the Holiday Inn would begin receiving passengers after Christmas once capacity was reached at the Novotel.

Victoria has now recorded a total of 20,351 confirmed cases, including those diagnosed in quarantine.

Sunday's results come after 6233 tests were processed across the state on Saturday.

Victoria's Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton revealed on Saturday that just over one in every 100 returned travellers tested positive during the first version of hotel quarantine.

"The likelihood of a positive case will vary depending on which country someone has arrived from, but we would expect to see at least a similar rate of positive cases being diagnosed in the coming weeks," he said.

The state's 42-day run of no new cases was broken on Saturday after authorities reported five infected air passengers in quarantine.

The COVID-positive passengers reported on Saturday were two men, one aged in his 30s and one in his 50s, as well as three women aged in their 20s, 30s and 50s, but the Department of Health has not revealed which countries they arrived from.

South Australians are now free to enter Victoria at will, as mandated permits for anyone travelling across the Victorian border were scrapped from midnight on Saturday.

After two examples reported last week of international travellers skipping hotel quarantine in Sydney before flying on to Melbourne, Ms Neville said Premier Daniel Andrews called for better airport protocols in other states while attending National Cabinet on Friday.

"The Premier did raise with the state and territories the need for them to reconsider the buses land side rather than airside. So there was no outcome from that but we have pushed that and will continue to push it," said Ms Neville.

Sunday marks a full week since Victoria began accepting international air arrival again after a five-month pause.

In early July, the state and the federal government cancelled all incoming flights to Melbourne until further notice after genomic testing revealed the bulk of COVID-19 cases in Victoria's deadly second wave had been seeded from hotel quarantine.

Professor Ben Cowie, the state's deputy Chief Health Officer in charge of health in quarantine hotels, said on Saturday that the detection of positive cases in the program was inevitable. But he added it was a sign of a working system.

"We're going to get more cases diagnosed in hotel quarantine, of people who are safely in quarantine," he said.

"And that is the system working as it's intended to."

All air arrivals are tested on arrival if they show symptoms, as well as day 3 and 11 of their 14-day hotel quarantine.

• With Ashleigh McMillan