Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has announced that all of metropolitan Melbourne and the Mitchell Shire will go back into Stage 3 Stay at Home Orders for six weeks.
There were 191 new cases of coronavirus recorded in the state yesterday, the highest single day increase for Victoria since the pandemic began.
The Stay at Home Order will begin at 11:59pm tomorrow night (Wednesday July 8).
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People in the metro area and Mitchell Shire will only be able to leave their home work and education, medical reasons, groceries and exercise.
Premier Andrews said during a press conference: "Essentially all the local government areas and Mitchell Shire which I regret to say, unlike the rest of regional Victoria, there are an unsustainably a number of high number of cases in Mitchell Shire.
"All of those metropolitan government areas, plus Mitchell Shire, will be the subject of the stay-at-home order from midnight tomorrow night. Those four reasons which are well known, they will extend to each and every person across the metropolitan area.
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"That is to say much like the settings that apply to those 12 lockdown postcodes, we have seen more positive cases in those postcodes and we have also seen leakage out of those postcodes and infections in other parts of Melbourne and then when you add all those together and get an aggregate picture, we're on the cusp of something very, very bad if we don't take these steps today.
"There's a couple of differences to the stay-at home order this time as compared to last time. You will be able to go out to go to work if you have to, to go shopping for the things you need when you need them, to study, to provide care or to get care.
"Daily exercise will be treated differently. You can't leave metropolitan Melbourne to get your daily exercise. There's a number, on the advice of the chief health officer, of very low public health risk activities that will be permitted that were not permitted last time but in the most important point to make around exercise is that you can't be going on a four-hour bush walk hundreds of kilometres away from Melbourne.
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"You can't be going fishing outside the metropolitan area, down into regional Victoria. Regional Victoria has very, very few cases and vast parts of regional Victoria have no cases. This is designed to keep it that way.
"I hope very soon to be able to be before you again talking about further easing of restrictions in regional Victoria. That's not for today. I do hope that is quite soon. And we'll only be able to achieve that if we continue to contain within metropolitan Melbourne and not see large outbreaks or additional cases in regional Victoria."
Premier Andrews says people should not try and travel to a holiday home and residents within the lockdown need to stay in their principle place of residence.
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