Victoria leaders provide COVID update amid 45 new cases

Mr Foley said of the current active cases 114 are aged under nine, 101 are children aged between 10 and 19 and 89 are people in 20s.

He said it was heartening to see a decrease in case numbers over the past couple of days, but the numbers do jump around and there was still a lot of work to do.

Victorian Deputy Premier James Merlino said the priority for the government is to make sure all year 12 students were vaccinated before sitting their exams on October 4.

"That is our priority," he said.

"We want to make sure they're vaccinated before their exams start."

Mr Merlino said they want all children over 12 to have received one vaccine dose before the end of the year.

Victoria recorded 45 new cases of COVID-19 in the 24 hours to midnight yesterday.

The majority of the cases - 28 - were infectious while in the community.

36 in hospital, nine ICU and seven on a ventilator.

READ MORE:

Only 17 were in isolation throughout their infectious period.

36 cases are linked to known outbreaks, but nine mystery cases remain under investigation.

31,629 COVID vaccinations were administered and 53,321 tests received in the 24 hours to midnight.

Yesterday, the Victorian government announced from today residents aged between 16 and 39 will be able to receive either AstraZeneca of Pfizer at state run vaccination clinics.

After the announcement Victorian government's vaccination website crashed after thousands of young people tried to secure a booking for a Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine.

In Bendigo, more than 700 appointments this week have been snapped up in less than 24 hours.

Bendigo Health chair Bob Cameron said all the appointments for the whole of next week were gone and the following week was expected to be fully booked out "extremely quickly".

"My message is very simple. If you want to register, do it immediately," he said.

"If you want to get the vaccine in September the opportunity is rapidly evaporating."

Mr Cameron said the vaccination centre was not accepting walk-ins.

Anecdotal stories are also emerging of waiting lists at GP clinics filling fast.

People trying to book at one Bendigo clinic watched waiting times swell from zero to 13 days within half-an-hour this morning and many are taking to social media to show screen grabs showing that sites are experiencing high volumes of traffic.

Premier Daniel Andrews yesterday said he would not be surprised to hear reports of sites crashing or of delays.

"I don't know if you can build a website big enough for over 1.2 million people who want to get vaccinated," Mr Andrews said.

"We are never happy to see systems overwhelmed, but it speaks to the point... [that] people want to get vaccinated really, really fast."

Mr Cameron expected more vaccination appointments to come online as soon as more Pfizer and AstraZeneca supplies arrived but it was still unclear exactly when that would be.