Under the old restrictions, women scheduled to begin new IVF treatment cycles after January 6 had to wait until April to resume while treatment cycles that were already underway were allowed to continue.

On Tuesday, Acting Victorian Health Minister James Merlino said the government has no other options at this time.

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"I know what an emotional toll it is, what a financial toll it is," Mr Merlino said.

"We'll return those services as quickly as possible. We're doing work right now on that."

However, following public outcry over the paused treatments and a change.org petition that gained over 140,000 signatures, the government reversed its decision on Thursday morning.

Medical director of Monash IVF Group and president of the Fertility Society of Australia Luk Rombauts said pausing of IVF would have had a detrimental effect on women and families.

"I had one patient last week who is well over 45, and we generally don't treat women once they're 46 because it becomes futile and the eggs don't survive beyond that time," he said.

"If these restrictions stood, that patient would not have been able to have treatment."

"It'll always be that remaining question of 'what if I'd had one further attempt? Maybe I would've walked away with a baby'.

"Imagine having to live with the knowledge that this virus has grabbed away your last chance at having a baby and never being able to experience what that means."

Professor Rombauts said people often forget that IVF patients have been under extreme stress well before they began to seek specialist IVF services.

"Unless you've actually gone through it yourself you don't realise how much stress that can put on a couple," he said.

"It's a long, stressful and expensive journey, which is why there is compulsory counselling before you even start treatment."

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Professor Rombauts said he was concerned patients would be forced to do 'reproductive tourism', putting extra strain on other states' healthcare systems.

"The concern we have is that patients might go to New South Wales for their treatment."

"You're just really shifting stress on one system to another."

"We know in New South Wales the situation is even more dire than here, so if it was a science based decision to restrict IVF then how come the science seems to be different in New South Wales than in Victoria?"

Professor Rombauts works at the Bendigo IVF clinic and said the move to pause IVF was also illogical, as most IVF staff would not have been able to fill staff shortages in COVID or ICU wards.

"Most of the staff we employ would not be suitable to be transferred," he said.

"Our anaesthetists would have needed to have been retrained to do ICU type work.

"Similarly, the nurses have a highly developed set of skills (specific to IVF)."

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Professor Rombauts also said the hospitals were standalone IVF procedure centres, so they wouldn't be suitable to take on COVID patients.

"We don't know what the underlying reasons were, the situation didn't really make sense."

In a press conference on Thursday morning Victorian premier Daniel Andrews backpedalled on the decision.

"It was about not having new patients come into the system," he said.

"But they will be able to come into that system from early next week. And the orders will be effective immediately."

IVF treatment restrictions will be slowly eased over the next week and will resume normal operations on January 25.

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