Japan to tighten COVID border controls for travellers from China

Japan will toughen its COVID-19 border control measures for travellers from China from Sunday, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said, in response to a surge of infections. Additional measures will require negative coronavirus tests taken within 72 hours of passengers boarding direct flights from China, the government said on Wednesday after Kishida's announcement, stepping up measures adopted on Dec. 30. Japan will continue to ask airlines to limit additional flights from China, he told a nationally televised New Year news conference. The decision followed results of COVID-19 tests on travellers from China in recent days and similar measures by other countries, he said. A Japanese health ministry tally shows 53 of 56 international travellers who tested positive for COVID on arrival at airports on Tuesday were from China. China's axing of its stringent virus curbs last month has unleashed COVID on a 1.4b population that has little natural immunity having been shielded from the virus since it emerged in Wuhan three years ago. "The opaque situation of the outbreak in mainland China has made many in Japan worried," Kishida later told a Fuji TV show.<br/>