Victoria has seen a slight increase in its COVID-19 cases with 76 new coronavirus infections overnight and 11 deaths of one female in her 60s, three females and two males in their 80s, three females and two males in their 90s.

Most of the cases were noted in Melbourne, with just seven new cases in regional Victoria from a total of 82 active cases.

There are currently 196 Victorians in hospital, 20 in intensive care of which 12 are on a ventilator.

Premier Daniel Andrews also stated that work permits will need to be reissued for employees over the next few weeks as the dates on them expire.

“When it comes to child care permits, those didn’t have a date on them and there is still a couple of weeks to run in terms of the likely shift, we hope, once we reach the 30-50 case trigger in metropolitan Melbourne,” he said.

The case numbers are higher than yesterday’s 55 new cases, however Victoria’s Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton has previously said that Wednesdays often see a spike in numbers.

The state’s roadmap of restrictions states that Melbourne needs to record a 14-day average of between 30-50 cases per day to progress to the next stop on 28 September.

READ MORE: Roadmap breakdown to ‘COVID Normal’ for Victoria

Sewage testing to track for COVID-19 was also discussed at the state conference on Wednesday. Nick Crosby from Melbourne Water said, “It starts principally in the bathroom, right. Many people who are infected will excrete in their stool. It can also be washed off their hands or if they’re using tissues, they might discard them in the toilet. Then there is the timing issue. If there is one person in a catchment, then the sewerage makes its way to the treatment plant and then you have to sample it at a certain time to detect that.”

According to experts, in small locations, the transit time may be as low as 30 minutes and from eight to 12 hours in larger cities like Melbourne.

Mr Andrews addressed the anger as a result of the roadmap he released on Sunday. “All I say to people is if anger and frustration were like a vaccine against this virus, then we would all be in a much better position. I just say to people, the notion that I have chosen this way to go and there were 50 other options I could have chosen, that’s not in any way accurate. We would all like to be open tomorrow. Myself included,” he said.

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“But to do that is not an act of leadership, that is to cave to some of the pressure that is there, to be driven by anger instead of the epidemiology, to be driven by opinion instead of science and data and doctors.”

He added that, at this point, politics has never been less important to him.