Bendigo Health said 50 per cent of eligible residents in the region had received their third dose of the COVID-19 vaccination, prompting a visit from a state health official.

COVID-19 commander Jeroen Weimar travelled to Bendigo Health's Mollison Street vaccination clinic on Thursday morning and said he was impressed with the set up.

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"I want to say my thanks and congratulations to Bendigo and the whole team at Bendigo Health," he said.

"From the testing teams, the contact tracing teams to the community engagement teams and of course to the vaccination team.

"It's fantastic to see half of the Bendigo community having their third dose already, thanks to the worth of Bendigo Health and their many partners across the community."

Bendigo Health chair Bob Cameron said the region's milestone put them "well ahead" of other parts of the state.

"The booster rate here is moving along very well with 50 per cent of eligible residents receiving their third dose as of today," he said.

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"It's a great credit to the people of Bendigo, it's a result of a very high vaccination rate has been one of the leaders when it comes to boosters.

"That's why we are seeing the numbers in hospitals starting to drop away.

"Congratulations Bendigo, you're doing a fantastic job and what you're really doing is helping us to protect the health of our healthcare system and allowing us to be able to move to the next stage as soon as possible."

Mr Cameron said as of Thursday, 14 people were currently at Bendigo Health with COVID-19 and 159 in the Hospital to Home program.

Mr Weimar said health authorities were prepared for fluctuation in daily figures schools returned.

"We do think we're past the peak at this point in time," he said.

"It will be interesting to see [how] the next few weeks go as we see probably greater levels of movement around the community."

Mr Weimar said the slightly higher number of cases over the past two days could attributed to students being tested.

"We're seeing an increasing proportion of the positive rapid antigen tests we're seeing coming in every day being people under the age of 20, so presumably [there is] a significant linkage into our school-age population," he said.

After it was confirmed some schools around Bendigo had not recieved their full shipments of rapid antigen tests this week, Mr Weimar encouraged staff to get in touch and move towards fixing the issue.

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"We certainly had six and a half million RAT kits coming out of our warehouses and going into the education system about 10 days ago," he said.

"I know our education colleagues and staff members have been working frantically during the holidays to make sure all those tests get to the staff and students.

"I'm sure there will always be some individual challenges for individual schools and I say my thanks to them for their efforts.

"If there are individual schools that are experiencing these issues, I urge them to get in touch with your government officials so we can get your allocation to you this week.

"We're really keen to make sure every school and student in primary, specialist and secondary have got access to testing so we can be confident that if there are any positive cases out there that we catch them early and we minimise the spread in schools."

After an announcement late on Wednesday, teens aged 16 and 17 are now able to receive their third dose after Australia's primary vaccine advisory body, ATAGI, recommended a third jab for the age group.

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Pfizer is the only brand approved for the cohort.

"There are now 114,000 16- to 17-year-olds in Victoria, who are eligible right now to get their third doses, it's been more than three months, since they had the second dose," Mr Weimar said.

"There's another, I think, 30,000 or so 16- to 17-year-olds in Victoria, who will have to wait a few more weeks when they get to their three month anniversary of the second dose."

Mr Weimar said work is under way so that updated vaccine certificates can be added to the Services Victoria app, used to check in to venues.

The state government has also extended access to its hospital surge support allowance to March 31.

The allowance is paid to workers who provide direct patient care in public hospital services and Ambulance Victoria, including our emergency departments, intensive care units and COVID-19 wards.

-With Australian Associated Press

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