Victoria has reported 279 new coronavirus infections, with another 16 Victorians having lost their lives from the virus in the past 24 hours.

New fatalities, 11 of which are linked to aged care clusters, bring the state’s death toll to 309, with authorities having warned that this will continue to rise, given the number of people currently hospitalised.

Premier Daniel Andrews said on Sunday there are 662 Victorians currently in hospital, with 40 patients receiving intensive care.

But the COVID-19 curve is showing promising signs with new infections continuing to decline, compared to 303 yesterday, Saturday, and 372 recorded on Friday.

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Mr Andrews announced the extension of the state of emergency by four weeks until 13 September, and appeared cautiously optimistic that the currently in full force lockdown is paying fruits.

But he warned against complacency explaining it is still early to say whether stage 4 restrictions will be lifted at the conclusion of the six-week period, pleading again with Victorians to get tested if they show even the mildest symptoms.

“If you do a trend over the last seven to 10 days, then we have gone from, around that period … 700 cases or more. We are now not in that territory, that is what the data says to us,” he said.”Where will we be tomorrow? We will have to wait and see what tomorrow’s numbers are.”

In a similar statement on Saturday, the Victorian Premier said “it’s one day at a time” citing difficulties to extrapolate data out reaching as far as mid-September when stage 4 restrictions are due to end.

But he said the modelling shows encouraging signs on dropping numbers in new cases during the period of movement restrictions.

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Indeed the steep decline in peoples’ movement is also verified through publicly available Google and Facebook data according to the Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton.

“We know from people’s mobile phones … how much time they are spending at home, how often they are asking for pedestrian directions, how often they are asking for driving directions, and we can get that mobility data at a population level, which tells us very much how restrictive we have been in our activity,” Mr Sutton said.

According to the data, as of 11 August, the state has seen:

  • Public transport use falling by 77 per cent
  • A 25 per cent increase of people staying at home
  • The number of people travelling to work slashed by half
  • An over 55 per cent decrease in traffic to retail, hospitality and entertainment.
  • Significant drop was also recorded in the numbers of people going to supermarkets, pharmacies, beaches and parks.