Japan will impose Covid-19 tests on passengers from mainland China, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced Tuesday.
This Tokyo measure will take effect from Friday. Visitors to China will thus be the only ones in Japan to automatically have to take a Covid-19 test, in addition to any traveler who shows symptoms upon arrival in Japan.
There are “reports that infections are spreading rapidly” in China, Kishida told reporters.
And “it is difficult to establish precisely the situation [na China] due to significant differences between central and local authorities, as well as between the government and the private sector,” said the Japanese Prime Minister.
“This is causing growing concern in Japan,” he stressed.
China announced this Monday the end of mandatory quarantines upon arrival in its territory as of January 8, the last vestige of its drastic measures against the Covid-19 pandemic that have been in force since 2020.
However, the gradual end of the “Covid zero” strategy in China since the beginning of December has been accompanied by a worrying increase in infections in the country.
The Chinese authorities have even stopped publishing daily data on the health situation since Sunday. The official figures were increasingly criticized, since the underestimation of the cases of infections and deaths became flagrant.
If they test positive upon arrival in Japan, travelers from China will be subject to a seven-day quarantine at designated facilities.
The number of flights from mainland China to Japan will also be limited, Kishida said.
Japan has fully reopened to foreign visitors since early October, after nearly two and a half years with its borders closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
In November, 934,500 foreign visitors arrived in Japan, about 40% of the pre-pandemic level of November 2019. In 2019, visitors from mainland China accounted for 30.1% of total foreign visitors to Japan.
Source: TSF
