(Yicai Global) Feb. 28 -- Japan will relax its Covid-19 restrictions on travelers from China after the European Union and South Korea set out plans to end mandatory polymerase chain reaction tests on arrival for passengers from China.

From tomorrow, Japan will stop testing all visitors from China for Covid on arrival, and will instead test selected samples, Jiji Press reported Matsuno Hirokazu, Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, as saying at a press conference yesterday. They will also still need to show a negative test result before boarding flights to Japan, Matsuno said.

The EU announced in mid-February that member states would cancel pre-departure PCR test for travelers from China by the end of the month and cancel on-arrival tests by mid-March. South Korea announced last week that it would no longer ask arrivals from China to have PCR tests from March 1.

Less than 1 percent of travelers from China had Covid, and they carried the same virus strain as the one prevalent in Japan, Kato Katsunobu, the country’s minister for health, labor, and welfare, said late last month.

China has also begun to relax its Covid-19 restrictions on international arrivals. The Chinese Embassy in New Zealand was the first to announce yesterday that, considering the development of the pandemic and the need to facilitate the movement of people, it will allow travelers on direct flights from New Zealand to China to take antigen tests instead of PCR tests from March 1.

Previously, people arriving from abroad were required to provide a negative PCR test result within 48 hours before boarding.

Editors: Dou Shicong, Futura Costaglione