Japan will impose Covid-19 testing on passengers coming from mainland China, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced today.

Tokyo's measure will come into force from Friday. Visitors from China will thus be the only people in Japan automatically required to take a covid-19 test, in addition to any traveler who shows symptoms on arrival in Japan.

There are "reports that infections are spreading rapidly" in China, Kishida told reporters.

And "it is difficult to accurately establish the situation [in China] because of the significant differences between central and local authorities, as well as between the government and the private sector," said the Japanese prime minister, quoted by Lusa.

"This is causing growing concern in Japan," he said.

China announced on Monday the end of mandatory quarantines on arrival in its territory from January 8, the last vestige of its drastic measures against the covid-19 pandemic that had been in place since 2020.

Meanwhile, the gradual closure of the "zero covid" 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 have been increasingly criticized, as the underestimation of cases of infection and deaths has become blatant.

If they test positive on arrival in Japan, travelers from China will be subject to a seven-day quarantine in 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 the beginning of October, after two and a half years of almost closing its borders due to the covid-19 pandemic.

In November, 934,500 foreign visitors arrived in Japan, about 40% of the level in November 2019, before the pandemic. In 2019, visitors from mainland China accounted for 30.1% of all foreign visitors to Japan.