The Government has decided not to force people travelling here from China to provide a negative pre-departure test, despite pressure from some epidemiologists.
It comes as a new COVID-19 variant makes waves in the US, spreading twice as fast as other variants and increasing hospitalisations.
While Kiwis might be in holiday mode, COVID-19 is still hard at work mutating into new variants.
"There's one in the USA especially, growing at an alarming rate, called XBB.1.5," microbiologist Dr Siouxsie Wiles said.
It accounts for at least 40 percent of current US cases.
US epidemiologist Dr Eric Feigl-Ding is labelling it as a 'super variant' that is "among the most immunity evasive 'escape variants' to date".
"Anywhere it goes, hospitalisations rise," Dr Feigl-Ding said. "We're very, very worried that this could cause major problems in the next month or two."
While there's no evidence that it is more deadly, XBB.1.5 does have more mutations and is better at evading antibodies from vaccines and previous COVID-19 infections.
"It is taking all the other Omicron variants out and displacing them at a rate we haven't seen since over a year ago," Dr Feigl-Ding said.
"We'd expect it to spread around the world and expect it to show up in Aotearoa," COVID-19 modeller Dr Dion O'Neale said.
Genome sequencing hasn't picked up the new variant here yet but it could already be among us.
"Given that we have flights every day from the USA, it's quite possible that it's already here," Dr Wiles said.
Cases aren't just climbing in the US. China's seen a massive increase since lifting restrictions, resulting in many countries such as the US, UK, Canada and Australia demanding negative tests from Chinese travellers before departure.
But not New Zealand.
"We've made our own assessment of risk to New Zealand, we've done it in a considered way [and] we don't see any basis for changing the policy in NZ," COVID-19 Response Minister Dr Ayesha Verrall said.
Instead, government scientists will be testing the toilet water from international flights to detect the virus. Also, because China is failing to share its COVID-19 data, officials here will email a random sample of travellers, asking them to take a voluntary RAT test.
"It's essentially to fill an information gap and get a sample," Dr Verrall said.
But some here say that's not enough. There are calls for all passengers from all countries to be tested.
"We should be doing that for everyone coming from overseas frankly, because as we know, it's not just the strains evolving in China - it's everywhere," Dr Wiles said.
And although our daily average for cases has fallen by more than 1000 in the past week, it's likely the real number is much higher.
"Because many people are away, they are not going to be testing and reporting as much," Dr O'Neale said.
So while Kiwis slip, slop, slap and wrap - don't forget to test if you're feeling symptomatic.
