More than a year on, the rollercoaster ride of our state's journey through the pandemic continues.

In the past 500 days, we've seen communities come together, some torn apart by border battles, and life as we know it turned upside-down.

More news: Seven new coronavirus cases in Victoria as health department investigates one mystery case

Since the pandemic started in March 2020, Victoria has recorded more than 20,924 cases of coronavirus and 820 deaths.

The Greater Bendigo municipality has recorded 102 cases of COVID-19, with the latest being added to the tally a week ago, on July 22.

Before then, the last recorded case in Bendigo was in September.

City of Greater Bendigo chief executive Craig Niemann said while the council had the beginnings of plans in place for a pandemic early on, what eventuated wasn't quite what it had imagined.

"We do a lot of emergency planning, probably with more of a focus on fire, flood and storm events, but we did have a pandemic plan," he said.

"It had never been tested before, but this set out a bit of a process of what we would do if a pandemic did hit and it was a big help in a lot of ways.

"We were able to go back to it when we realised that this was a global issue that would affect us locally and we realised we would have to change the way we operate our business and how we would support the community."

More stories:

Mr Niemann said council put plans into action and joined others in doing the right thing to keep the disease at bay.

"We had to adjust pretty quickly like everyone else. We have about 1000 people working for us and that's from garbage truck drivers to work crews and maternal and child health workers to office staff," he said.

"We had to make sure we could continue to enable people to work, and we had to start looking at adjusting our capability in IT to allow as many people to work from home as possible.

"We'd been thinking of ways we could work in the future anyway and ways of being more portable and flexible, but we were able to put that in place really quickly.

"It was important for us to demonstrate that we were doing our bit."

While the community suffered through multiple lockdowns, Mr Niemann said the council did everything it could to keep the city together.

Related: COVID fatigue rising for individuals and businesses as Victoria emerges from lockdown

"It was great that we were able to get community leaders together and form a COVID-19 committee," he said.

"They worked hard to try to understand the "today" and what the expectation was on the community today and what it looks like in the future.

"And they put together a plan that was adjusted regularly to make sure we met the needs of people and businesses who had been impacted."

He said the Bendigo community's ability to rally behind each other was a contributing factor to helping the area through the pandemic so far.

"There were a lot of businesses that were affected, but a lot of support from locals," Mr Niemann said.

More news:Bendigo Airport to get new helipad, no announcement on terminal bid

"Overwhelmingly, this community responded in the way that it should have, which was to do the right thing and follow government advice.

"No one has really written the rules on how to get through this so there was a lot of contemplating and thinking as we went."

Interactive timeline: the first 100 days of COVID-19 in central Victoria (story continues below)

Read more: 100 days that changed the nation

Frontline workers, who already had difficult jobs, are easily the heroes of the pandemic.

Their seemingly thankless work was now on display as some of the most important as COVID-19 numbers soared across the country.

Bendigo Health chief executive Peter Faulkner said staff swung into action as soon as signs of the virus started to appear early last year.

More stories:

"I made the decision early on to be courageous and that I would rather be criticised for doing too much too soon, than too little too late," he said.

"We created new models of care such as dividing the emergency department into a respiratory and a non-respiratory stream, we introduced screening of visitors and moved appointments to telehealth where possible.

"We created a dedicated ward for people who were suspected to have COVID or had tested positive and we trained all our staff in the current use of personal protective equipment.

"We are very lucky that the new hospital building has a number of design features that made it easier to adapt: we have isolation rooms, good ventilation and multiple entrances to the building so we could separate patients who were suspected of having COVID from those who did not.

"It was important that we made decisions quickly to open new beds, develop and run testing clinics, recruit and train contact tracers and more recently set up and operate our vaccination hub."

To date, Bendigo Health has tested 82,595 people for the virus and administered 49,100 COVID-19 vaccinations.

Read more: Slow easing of coronavirus restriction hampers Bendigo Venues and Events rescheduling efforts

Mr Faulkner said there were some difficult decisions that had to be made in order to keep people safe.

"We had to make difficult choices about saying no to visitors in the hospital and our residential care facilities," he said.

"To ease the strain of this, we installed visitor pods that enabled safe non-contact visits for family members and their loved ones. These have been a great success."

Current Victorian case numbers by location (story continues below)

But for Mr Faulkner, it wasn't just about the city itself.

"As the leader of a large regional health service, I felt an immense sense of responsibility not just to Bendigo, but to our entire region and everyone in it. I believe our staff shared that sense of responsibility and I am so proud of our team," he said.

"I worked collaboratively with the other chief executives in the Loddon-Mallee to ensure we all had the information and resources we required to do our jobs and this was demonstrated most recently when we sent staff to assist in Mildura."

More news: New $400m support package aims to help central Victorian businesses

While Victoria's case numbers rose, there were few places that could say they hadn't seen any COVID-19 positives.

One of those places is the Buloke Shire - but only just.

Former Buloke Shire mayor Carolyn Stewart said the council knew that although the municipality was isolated, the community needed to be vigilant.

"We wanted to make sure everyone knew what was happening, what the real situation was and how if affected us locally," she said.

"Obviously we have a very vulnerable population up here. Our average age is 50 years old and close to 30 per cent of our population is aged over 65, so we knew that if it got to us the consequences would be so serious.

"It was our aim to set good examples and make sure everyone is well-informed."

More news: Bendigo Tramways remains closed despite lockdown ease

Cr Stewart began creating video messages that allowed council to deliver the information to the community in a way that engaged as many people as possible.

"Right at the beginning, there were a lot of people saying they didn't care if they got sick and of course there were a lot of vulnerable people around, so I made a video about my nephew and him being my reason to social distance," she said.

"He is very immunosuppressed and I haven't been able to see him for months now, so I just wanted to show a personal side and put the question out to the shire and ask who they social distance to protect."

As for how the shire has kept the COVID-19 cases away, Cr Stewart says it's all about coming together.

"I think there are a few factors, our location really helps for one. We have a lot of space and a smaller population so that makes it easier to socially distance," she said.

"And right from the beginning, we kept encouraging people to behave as if the virus was already here.

"Because we are along the Calder Highway between a number of larger centres, we knew it would only be a matter of time before we would get a scare and of course this latest COVID-19 scare in Wycheproof proves that.

More stories:

"We talked about 'when' and not 'if' and stayed in that mindset and state of preparedness, ready just in case we did get cases.

"The staff there were right on it and they've been ready for so long that they knew exactly what to do and it paid off.

"I think it's all down to the community. They've followed the rules and encouraged others to do the same.

"Our communities truly care about each other and they just seemed willing to make any necessary sacrifices to keep their towns safe."

If there's one thing everyone agrees on, it's that the fight isn't over yet.

"We might be 500 days in, but we don't know where the finish line is so we all need to keep going," Mr Faulkner said.

More news: Swan Hill to Southern Cross train services changed to coaches after tracks damaged

"We need to keep doing those small things that make such a difference, such as wearing masks, using the QR codes, washing our hands, getting tested and most importantly, getting vaccinated when you can.

"To the staff of Bendigo Health, you really are an incredible team of people and I have felt your strong commitment to our vision of excellent care. Every person, every time on every one of the 500 days and I know our community can count on you to be there when they need you. Thank you."

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can access our trusted content: