China Says to Avoid Mail from Abroad, Says Omicron May Arrive via Post

"China is advising people to avoid foreign mail and open packages outside, citing COVID-19 risks"

Unless, of course, you're one of the millions of Chinese not allowed outside due to COVID lockdowns.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3163657/did-... "The Omicron variant of the coronavirus could have entered the Chinese capital Beijing via contaminated mail from Canada, the city’s centre for disease control said on Monday.

Pang Xinghuo, deputy director of the Beijing Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, said the city’s first Covid-19 patient to be diagnosed with the variant had received a letter mailed from Canada on January 7.

“We do not rule out the possibility that the person was infected through contacting an object from overseas,” she said."

Well, I do wonder how many pieces of mail your average Chinese citizen gets per day.

Can't be decisively more than we in the west do - I have maybe one letter per week, most of them "official letters" which are printed, enveloped and delivered automatically, with the only hand ever having touched it before me being the mailman, and some Amazon delivery every 3-4 days... Letters from abroad? Not in the last decade.

I think the issue might be a bit overblown.

That's probably nonsense, viruses can't live without a host for long.

Especially not Amazon packages drop-shipped from China…