Japan will lift its current COVID-19 border controls for all arrivals on Saturday in anticipation of an increase in travelers during the Golden Week holidays, the government said.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno, the top government spokesman, said Friday that Japan will no longer require all entrants to present certification of at least three COVID-19 vaccination doses or a negative coronavirus test taken within 72 hours of departure.
Japan had originally planned to end the border steps on May 8, the same day the legal status of the coronavirus will be downgraded to the status of common infectious diseases such as seasonal influenza, but it coincides with the end of the holidays that start this weekend.
As for China, the government decided to no longer request visitors from the mainland submit to random testing at airports, which replaced blanket COVID-19 testing that ended in March.
In late December, Japan introduced a requirement that all arrivals from mainland China be screened for the virus amid an explosion in infections in the country after Beijing drastically relaxed its stringent "zero-COVID" policy that had involved lockdowns and quarantines.
The Japanese government switched to random testing at airports after finding that the number of arrivals testing positive had dropped.
On May 8, Japan will start a new genomic surveillance program at Haneda, Narita and three other major airports, under which entrants with symptoms including fever are asked to undergo a voluntary test to detect new infectious diseases.
