After an increase of just three cases in ten weeks, the Mornington Peninsula has now had eight new cases in a week. And as the state’s total climbs dramatically higher, it seems the peninsula may not be immune from the second wave.
Only last week, the Mornington Peninsula Shire and organisations like the Committee for the Mornington Peninsula were lamenting being bundled into the metropolitan Melbourne return to level three restrictions, arguing that the peninsula was not part of metro Melbourne.
Who could blame them? Virus free, and having to suffer the economic and social restrictions of metro Melbourne seemed like a ridiculous position.
But now, just one week later, it appears we may not be resistant and may be left to ponder what could have been.
If the state government had excluded us from the new lockdown with police setting up roadblocks at the entrances to the peninsula, as they are the main thoroughfares into regional Victoria, would we have escaped what seems like an inevitable rise in peninsula cases?
Did leaving us in the new lockdown area encourage those from highly infected areas to assume it was okay to travel down to the Mornington Peninsula as it was still within the lockdown zone?
Now we are left holding our breath, waiting to see what comes tomorrow and over the weekend. Have we dodged the second wave, or are we just a week or two behind ‘metro-Melbourne’ and heading for a spike?
Only time will tell.
The Mornington Peninsula continues to slip down the list of Local Government Area’s number of infections and we currently sit at 23. Remembering we were once the second highest level of infections in the state, that is at least something. But the next few days will be crucial to see if we will escape the full throng of the second wave, or be sucked back into the mire.
