Victoria has announced a new national record of COVID-19 case numbers on Saturday with the state recording 51,356 new infections.
Victoria Health also announced nine new deaths with 644 people in hospital, 106 people in ICU and 24 people on a ventilator.
The spike in cases on Saturday is almost three times more than what was reported on Friday - 21,728.
Victoria Health Minister Martin Foley took a surprisingly positive view to the record daily COVID-19 case numbers, saying they're "exactly what we wanted".
Saturday marked the first day Victoria used their new online portal for reporting cases, which requires people to upload their positive rapid antigen tests.
Victoria Health said of the 51,356 new cases, 26,428 are from rapid tests, while 24,928 were detected from standard PCRs.
The record case numbers on Saturday can be put down to the majority of the rapid tests that were recorded throughout this week but were only made known to the department when the online system opened on Friday.
The number of people who actually received their positive rapid antigen test result on Friday was 5923.
Foley said the new reporting style provided the health department with a "realistic picture of transmission in the community".
"We knew there were undiagnosed cases out there," he said.
"What we now know is that the figure for cases in the wider community is more accurate than we had previous to just taking the PCR test.
"Having this realistic figure allows us to put more people in contact with the support they need and get them through this challenging time.
"This is, in many respects, exactly what we wanted to happen... Nobody wants COVID, nobody wants the Omicron variant, but it is so important for responding and keeping people in touch with services and support that we know who has turned positive."
Meanwhile, in New South Wales, there has been an increase of COVID-19 cases with the state recording 45,098 infectious, up from 38,625 on Friday.
New South Wales Health announced that nine people lost their lives to COVID-19 while there are 1795 people in hospital and 145 in ICU.
