Victoria recorded 19 deaths on Monday, its deadliest total since the pandemic started. Photo / News Corp Australia
Emotional tales which reveal the huge toll of coronavirus will be aired across Victoria in a bid to get residents to comply with the stage four lockdown.
The new ads were unveiled on Monday and tell the confronting stories of people who caught the virus, including middle-aged woman June who thought she would die.
She spent 32 days in intensive care.
"I didn't know how serious it was or whether I may live through the first night," she said.
"Every day there was virtually no improvement. Coronavirus has affected me physically, I have weakness down my right side and nerve damage in right hand. Please listen to the medical experts – this is a terrible disease."
Mother-of-two Sarah described coronavirus as like nothing she had experienced "ever before".
"I was almost debilitated with chest pains. I wasn't able to fully inflate my lungs without excruciating pains," she said.
"It's attacked every single of my body systems and I still feel incapacitated four weeks after."
Sarah, who has had to isolate away from her two children, had this key message: "If you're thinking about bending the rules think about who you love most in the world and if they were to be put in ICU."
Victoria's Premier Daniel Andrews said the Covid-19 pandemic was one of the "greatest challenges" the state has "ever faced".
"This is a matter of life or death," he said.
"We experience great adversity every summer, every single summer, we experience really difficult times as a community often – it's the nature of the place we live and the circumstances we confront.
"We are strong, resilient and at our best when we are one, when we look out for each other and understand how all of our acts and behaviours make a difference."
Andrews said the advertisements would be broadcast on "every conceivable platform".
He also said a "larger proportion" of Victorian communities were doing the right thing, compared to two weeks ago, but urged Victorians to not become complacent.
"This is a wicked enemy and it will do everything it can to wear you down and that's where it flourishes, when we let our guard down."
It comes after Victoria recorded 322 new infections overnight, but tragically it marked the state's deadliest day with 19 people succumbing to the wildly infectious disease.
Fourteen of the 19 people were linked to the state's plagued aged-care system.
A man in his 50s, a woman in her 60s, two men in their 70s, one man and six women in their 80s and one man and seven women in their 90s all died, taking the state's death toll to 228.
A total of 647 Victorians are in hospital, with 47 in intensive care.
Dominique Pelicot had already confessed to the crimes.