I don't mind confessing I experienced a twinge of anxiety around the decision from China to rip the Covid Band-Aid off and allow its citizens to travel abroad.  

Maybe I was slightly triggered from a bit of déjà vu from this time three years ago when we were just seeing the emergence of the virus which led to – well, we all know the journey we've been on over the past three years.  

Of course, we live in a different world now - many of us had COVID and we've had broad vaccines and boosters rolled out. And, we are having plenty of our own homegrown cases with the latest figures being about 32,000 over the course of the past week.  

However, as we know China has tried to sit on the virus for a very long time and is now experiencing a significant outbreak. 

Of further concern is the lack of transparency around the scale of the outbreak in China.  

But while nationwide figures in China are incomplete we do have some evidence from which we can get a rough idea of what is happening over there.  

Reuters news agency is reporting China's Zhejiang, a big industrial province near Shanghai, is battling around a million new daily COVID-19 infections That is out of a population of 52 million people. It’s a number which is soon expected to double. One million daily cases, not weekly, daily, in other words close to 2% of their population per day are estimated to be getting Covid. Extrapolate that across the rest of the China and that is one hell of a lot of cases. 

But it's also important that we maintain some perspective on this as the world is a different place, as is New Zealand since the news of the outbreak in China three years ago.  

However, I don't think it hurts to be cautious,  

Especially on the back of recent announcement from the US that, based on China’s lack of transparency, the Biden administration will require that travelers from China present negative COVID tests before entering the US. This follows similar moves by other countries including Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Malaysia, and India! 

In Italy, the health minister said on Wednesday that all travelers from China would be required to take Covid-19 antigen tests upon arrival so the virus could be sequenced if it is detected. 

Back here, our Ministry of Health officials have no similar plans, but will “continue to monitor the situation”. They’ve stated that the global situation will continue with the emergence of new variants and waning immunity.  

And I guess it's on the back of those perfunctory statements that I stopped to wonder whether I have confidence in the ministry and our government acting in a timely manner to mitigate the effect of new variants.  

Obviously, we're not going to be closing our borders off but when you've got a country of a billion people acting as a Petri dish one wonders whether the cautious approach of the United States is worth consideration so we are not unnecessarily importing extra variants and cases.  

At the very least it's something that might warrant a little more comment and examination by our ministry officials.  

Because at the moment I get the sense that everyone's on holiday – much like I did three years ago.  

Yes, let's continue to get on with our lives and enjoy the summer.  

But while we have our own little surge going on, a little caution at the border regarding visitors from China – well, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.