China has made good on its threat to retaliate against countries that implemented “discriminatory” new rules requiring negative COVID tests from Chinese travellers after suspending the issuing of short-term visas in South Korea and Japan. China has moved away from its strict ‘zero COVID’ policy since locals let it be known that they’d had enough, reopening its international borders for the first time in 3 years on Sunday. COVID is now believed to be rapidly spreading across the country, with satellite images of crowded crematoriums in major cities contradicting the low official death rates. That saw several countries – including Oz – enforce new requirements for Chinese travellers. So far, we’ve avoided any blowback… Meanwhile, the World Health Organization is urging travellers to mask up on long-haul flights to slow the spread of new Omicron subvariants like XBB.1.5, dubbed ‘the Kraken’. It was confirmed to have made it to Oz late last week.

And while we’re talking air travel, passengers in the US have had a bad night after more than 6,000 flights were grounded due to a computer outage. Flights are slowly resuming, with authorities blaming a ‘glitch’ in the system, but it could be a long day of delays ahead…