Central Victorians will soon learn when COVID-19 restrictions will ease in line with the state reaching its 90 per cent full COVID vaccination target.
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Bendigo has 174 active cases, while Shepparton (331 active cases), Geelong (291), Latrobe (309), Wodonga (101) and Mildura (72) all continue to record high daily case numbers.
With 87.4 per cent of Victorians 12 and over now double-vaccinated, the state is just days away from hitting its 90 per cent target.
Bendigo officially reached the 95 per cent fully vaccinated threshold late Sunday afternoon, and it's estimated more than 98 per cent of eligible residents have had at least one dose of vaccine.
Once the state reaches its 90 per cent mark, initially forecast for about November 24, Victorians are promised a return to normality with patron caps removed and masks only required on public transport and in high-risk settings.
Premier Daniel Andrews said a date for when the new restrictions take effect will be announced later this week.
"It might be Thursday. It might be Friday. It might be Saturday. It's not today," he told reporters at state parliament on Tuesday.
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"Not to be flippant about it, but we have to be clear on exactly what day we will tick over the 90 per cent, and consistent with what we did at 80 per cent and 70 per cent as well, we're trying to give people as much notice as possible."
Opposition Leader Matthew Guy said the mark was an outstanding achievement for any constituency in the world and called for indoor mask requirements to be scrapped altogether.
"We should be very proud of that, always. But ... that means we should have our freedoms returned," he said on Tuesday.
"Bills like we're looking at are inhibitors to moving on. It actually gets in the way of people's mental health to move on from COVID."
The Victorian government's new pandemic legislation was debated in the upper house on Tuesday after a series of amendments were brokered with key crossbenchers, as protesters spent a second night on the steps of parliament.
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