Japan is eas­ing its coro­n­avirus bor­der mea­sures for tourists from Chi­na be­gin­ning Wednes­day by test­ing on­ly ran­dom pas­sen­gers, a top gov­ern­ment spokesman said Mon­day.

Since De­cem­ber, Japan has been test­ing all trav­el­ers from main­land Chi­na at four des­ig­nat­ed air­ports on grounds of surg­ing in­fec­tions in that coun­try and a lack of in­for­ma­tion. Vis­i­tors from Chi­na are al­so re­quired to show a proof of pre-board­ing neg­a­tive test.

Chief Cab­i­net Sec­re­tary Hi­rokazu Mat­suno told a news con­fer­ence that as of Wednes­day, on­ly ran­dom test­ing will be car­ried out on pas­sen­gers from Chi­na.

The change is in­tend­ed to “pro­mote smooth in­ter­na­tion­al trav­el” tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion rel­a­tive­ly low in­fec­tion rates among ar­rivals over the past two months, Mat­suno said. All sam­ples analysed at the bor­der were of the omi­cron strains, which are al­ready found in­side Japan, he said.

Proof of pre-board­ing neg­a­tive test will still be re­quired, he said.

Di­rect flights from Chi­na, cur­rent­ly on­ly al­lowed to land at Nari­ta, Hane­da, Chubu and Kan­sai, will be ex­pand­ed to oth­er air­ports.

Chi­na, which lift­ed its “ze­ro-COVID” pol­i­cy in De­cem­ber, re­tal­i­at­ed for the stricter bor­der mea­sures im­posed by Japan and South Ko­rea by tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend­ing short-term visas for the na­tion­als of the two coun­tries. Chi­na has since re­sumed is­su­ing visas in Japan.

South Ko­rea has al­ready re­moved en­try re­stric­tions for short-term trav­el­ers from Chi­na since the be­gin­ning of Jan­u­ary, as of­fi­cials saw the pan­dem­ic in Chi­na be­ing sta­bi­lized.

Japan plans to large­ly re­lax its mask-wear­ing re­quests on March 13 and leave it up to in­di­vid­u­als. It will al­so down­grade COVID-19 to the equiv­a­lent of sea­son­al in­fluen­za in May.

By MARI YA­M­AGUCHI

TOKYO (AP)