As Vic daily pressers come to an end, Weimar looks towards winter

COVID Commander Jeroen Weimar addressed his final daily briefing in Melbourne on Saturday, as Victoria became united again under the same restrictions.

"I'm not hanging up the jacket yet ... if I look at the phases of work ahead of us, we need get the community to 90 per cent double-dose vaccinated - that should be by the end of November," he said.

"We've got to work through the booster-dose program, we've then got to look at five-to-11-year-olds and get them vaccinated.

"There's been exciting news with the FDA in the U.S. approving vaccinations for five-to-11-year-olds.

"When we get to the early part of next year, we will look at what the preparations are going to be for autumn and winter.

"We're watching the Northern Hemisphere with great interest."

A daily Chief Health Officer release will continue to be produced and Mr Weimar said targets would now reference the population aged 12 and older, with an aim of 90 per cent double-dose coverage by late November.

"I'm confident we'll get to that," he said.

"I am really ambitious about those remaining first doses we'd like to get out there; today we've got in the region of 180,000 people in their 20s who are not yet first-dose vaccinated.

"Whether you're going out and enjoying the many things that are now possible in both Melbourne and in regional Victoria, please remember that those basic COVID-safe behaviours are so important.

"If you've got symptoms, please continue to get tested.

"You will have an additional option from Monday; rapid antigen tests will be more widely available, certainly through all major supermarkets.

"Clearly any positive test with a rapid antigen test is to be backed up with one of our PCRs, but again, these are all additional tools that become more possible as we start to move around."

Mr Weimar joked "we'd all love to see less of the COVID Commander" and said the response wouldn't change.

"The new content at these daily press conferences is getting a bit light ... and I think the vast majority of the public are moving into a COVID-normal situation.

"I know that for thousands of Victorians these daily opportunities have been a way to to understand what's going on within the state and to deal with the anxiety that so many of us feel about what's going on with COVID.

"As we start to move towards a more stable environment and a clearer way forward, I think we can all become slightly less fixated on numbers.

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"The beginning of September was a genuinely challenging time; the point at which we realised that all the hard work we'd done over so many months, to hold COVID down to zero, to deal with those small outbreaks we had ... that recognition that Delta is different, it's got into our soft underbelly and it's now spreading in a way that we can no longer control ... that was a very difficult moment.

"This has been a really hard pandemic; we're asking so much of our health care workers ... and it will be a challenging few months ahead.

"There's a long way to go again before we really get back to having sustained freedoms."