Businesses in the North-East have dodged a return to lockdown with the Victoria Government confirming a drastic city-only response to a surge in coronavirus cases in hotspot suburbs.
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But, Wodonga and other centres south of the border have slipped further behind Albury with Queensland opening its border to NSW residents from July 10 for a mid-year winter holiday on the proviso they haven't been to Victoria in the previous 14 days.
All 64 cases of COVID-19 detected in Victoria in the last 24 hours were in Melbourne with the majority being in the hotspot suburbs.
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In response, 10 postcode areas in metropolitan areas will return to stay at home lockdown from midnight Wednesday for four weeks.
Business Wodonga chairman Graham Jenkin said local pubs, restaurants and cafes which were just starting to re-open would be relieved the shutdowns didn't apply to them.
"It would have been horrifying if local hospitality businesses had to return to stage three lockdowns again when there were no recent active cases of coronavirus in this area," he said.
"Hopefully in the near future there will be a further easing of restrictions in regional areas like ours on the key proviso people respect social distancing and other hygiene-related measures."
Prime Minister Scott Morrison weighed into the folly of the one size fits all solution to fighting coronavirus on Tuesday.
He said there was "little sense" to keeping borders shut to Victorians who don't live in the Melbourne hotspots.
"There are ways to mitigate the risk coming out of Victoria and frankly to resist all of Victoria makes little sense," he said.
"If you are living in Wangaratta then you are no more affected by what is going on in those suburbs of Melbourne than if you are living in Whyalla.
"We've got to get some perspective.
"There will be outbreaks, there will be hotspots and you just can't shut Australia up every time there is an outbreak.
"Australia has to go forward and we have to go forward despite COVID-19."
He said regional development minister Jaclyn Symes was part of a discussion on the issue only a week ago.
"We've put a proposal to the government saying we need to have different restrictions in county areas because we seem to be able to control things better, our health system is in place, we practice social distancing a lot better, we don't seem to go out to places we shouldn't and we've got wide open spaces around us to hopefully not contract the coronavirus," Cr Rees said.
"As a result, we should have the freedoms by postcode or municipal area like Wangaratta to be able to travel all the way up through NSW, into Queensland or South Australia and not be tarred with that same brush of our metropolitan neighbours.
"It has been indicated it will be spoken about to Dan Andrews, but nothing will happen until after the school holidays."
People from city hotspots who had already travelled away for school holidays are not required to return immediately, but those who were planning to go away were told to stay at home.
