A new state government plan will see regional Victoria increase to 75 per cent of usual elective surgery activity from tomorrow and 85 per cent from September 28.

Non-urgent elective surgeries were put on hold in early August, to ensure regional hospitals had the capacity to cope with a potential coronavirus outbreak.

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Health Minister Jenny Mikakos said the resumption of elective surgeries would be staggered to ensure hospitals could still respond to outbreaks.

"This is being done in this careful staged way to enable us to retain capacity in our hospital system to be able to respond to these outbreaks," she said.

"We want to make sure that there's capacity there to respond to outbreaks, whether it's in particular aged care outbreak, or an outbreak in the hospital itself, or other significant outbreaks in the community.

"We will continue to assess all of this, as we are doing with a roadmap, based on data every day based on the advice that we get from our public health experts."

MAKING NEWS ACROSS ARARAT:

All Victorian hospitals will move to 100 per cent of usual activity when the state moves to the Last Step to COVID Normal, planned for 23 November.

There are now 37 active cases in regional Victoria, and there are less than 1000 active cases statewide for the first time in 10 weeks.

There are currently 991 active cases in regional Victoria.

At 11:59pm tonight the regions will move to the 'third step' on the roadmap out of lockdown.

Travel restrictions within regional Victoria will be eased, reasons to leave the home removed and larger outdoor gatherings allowed.

Victoria Police is expected to announce enforcement measures on travel between regional Victoria and metropolitan Melbourne early this afternoon.

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