Victoria’s Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton says he thinks it’s entirely possible the state can plateau with high vaccination coverage and a relatively lower COVID-19 caseload.

Speaking during Saturday’s COVID-19 update, he said while Victorians were all “fed up” with being stuck at home and not being able to see their friends and family, “there is really only one way to protect yourself, and that’s following the rules”.

“There’s no question that it’s hard, [however], the alternative is too awful to contemplate,” he said.

“Tens of thousands of cases could be our reality if we don’t maintain ... those really tricky constraints on our life, [and] that’s just the awful dilemma that we’ve had right through.

“We’ve held a tsunami of cases back for 20 months. It’s come to us in waves, we’ve beaten it back in waves [and] we’ve got maybe the biggest challenge that we’ve ever faced.

“But we’ve also got a proper pathway out of here with vaccination, so hold the line in these last weeks and months until we get the high vaccination coverage that means that we can have greater confidence about seeing people ... initially outdoors, initially in those ventilated settings, and in smaller numbers, but we will get there.”