On the morning of August 26, 2021, my wife and I arrived at Christchurch Airport, New Zealand, for our flight to Heathrow. The airport was a ghost town. All the shops were closed and the notifications board showed mostly cancelled flights. Just nine days before, Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s Prime Minister, had announced the whole nation would be plunged into a level 4 (the strictest level) lockdown due to the identification of a single case of the Delta variant in Auckland.

Our flight was nearly empty (there were maybe 15 passengers).