Victoria has recorded 860 new COVID-19 infections and five people have died, as childcare services in the state are sent rapid tests to help children identified as close contacts return sooner.
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It is the second day Victoria's case numbers have dropped below 1000, after reporting 905 cases on Sunday.
The state is managing 17,518 total active cases, the health department said on Monday.
There are 378 virus patients in hospital, 78 patients in ICU are actively infected with COVID-19 and 48 are on ventilators.
There were more than 48,000 virus test results processed on Sunday, and 5030 people were vaccinated.
About 87 per cent of Victorians aged over 12 are now fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
The state government has announced $2.5 million will be put into helping vulnerable or disadvantaged Victorians get vaccinated.
The money aims to help people book a vaccination appointment and arrange childcare to allow parents to attend their appointment.
Community organisations and neighbourhood houses can apply for grants of up to $20,000 to deliver activities that increase access to a COVID-19 vaccine and information.
Meanwhile, young children who become primary close contacts will be allowed to return to childcare after seven days, as long as they perform a rapid COVID-19 tests for 14 days.
The state government will distribute free rapid antigen testing kits to kindergartens and long daycare centres this week to help manage COVID-19 outbreaks in early childhood services.
From Monday, eligible kindergartens and long daycare services are invited to opt into a program to receive at-home rapid antigen tests for kids identified as primary close contacts.
This will halve quarantine for those children to seven days, with kids allowed to return to early childhood services after quarantine if they test negative to COVID-19 in a PCR test on day six.
To attend childcare again, children must return negative rapid antigen tests each they attend a service, from days eight to 14.
Families must report the test results to their childcare provider each morning before attending.
Victoria's Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton has criticised the national cabinet COVID-19 roadmap for failing to mention what will happen in the pandemic "recovery phase".
"Disappointingly, the (national cabinet) roadmap includes no explicit recovery phase; it as if we could all soon heave a sigh of relief and simply move on," Professor Sutton and health economist Stephen Duckett wrote in the Medical Journal of Australia.
Recovery would allow planning for workforce responses, prepare for worker burnout and staff recovery, they said.
It would also include lessons from the pandemic across government, hospitals and primary care services, to discover "what went well, what went badly".
They called for the federal government to share in the health costs caused by the pandemic and said decision makers should spend early 2022 "assessing and developing strategies" to respond to problems brought on by the pandemic.
Elective surgeries resumed at 50 per cent capacity at private hospitals and day surgeries in Melbourne and Geelong on Monday, as part of a modest restart to the health system.
Monday also signalled a vaccine deadline for residential aged care workers, who must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 to continue working.
Australian Associated Press
