No new local COVID-19 cases in Victoria
Victoria recorded its second straight day without a local COVID-19 case, as Premier Daniel Andrews prepared to flesh out his plan to avoid future lockdowns at national cabinet.
The Department of Health on Friday confirmed there were zero locally acquired cases and three in hotel quarantine following more than 24,700 tests.
The three overseas acquired infections pushed up the state's active cases to 32.
Almost 19,500 vaccine doses were administered at Victorian-run sites in the 24-hours to midnight on Thursday.
The encouraging figures come as Mr Andrews announced Victoria's four-point plan to keep Australia safe and avoiding future lockdowns, which he will advocate at Friday's gathering of state and territory leaders.
The premier is recommending a 50 to 80 per cent reduction in Australia's returned travellers cap for three to four months, refining the eligibility criteria for those travelling abroad, a nationally agreed vaccination target and short-term alternatives to hotel quarantine.
"We have a critical window to get our population vaccinated, defeat this pandemic and return to a sense of free and normal life," he said in a statement ahead of the meeting.
He argues it is better to lock Australians out than down and provided statistics to highlight recurring failures in hotel quarantine.
Mr Andrews said there had been 4.9 failures per 1000 positive cases in quarantine, equating to one outbreak for every 204 infected travellers.
Victoria currently only allows about 1000 international travellers to land at Melbourne Airport and enter hotel quarantine each week - a third of NSW's cap.
Across the Murray River, Victorians have been caught out by NSW local government areas within the cross-border community becoming orange zones from 6am on Friday.
Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton said the change to the state's permit system was made "out of an abundance of caution".
It does not restrict free movement in the border bubble for residents, as long as they have not travelled north into orange or red zones and carry photo ID.
But Victorians across the border for school holidays must now get a test and isolate until they return a negative result.
Some cut their holidays short to beat the deadline including Frank and his family who were staying at a Moama caravan park.
"We were sitting back last night having a few drinks about 8.30pm and the proprietor of the caravan park let us know that we had to get back across the border," he told Melbourne radio 3AW on Friday.
"At five o'clock this morning we were in the car driving across the border."
Another group of golfers in the NSW border town of Tocumwal said they had successfully applied for orange zone permits ahead of travelling back into Victoria later on Friday.
Hundreds of police are continuing to monitor the Victorian-NSW border and have stopped thousands of people in vehicles and on public transport.
Meanwhile, a returned traveller has finally reunited with her dying father after encountering red tape when she rushed back from the United States.
Anna Coffey, 32, flew to Sydney from New York last week after her 80-year-old father John suffered a stroke and went into palliative care in a Melbourne hospital.
After battling to get an exemption and securing a charity flight to Melbourne, she shared a PPE-clad photo of herself at her dad's bedside.
