Australia has joined other countries and scrapped the requirement for travelers coming from the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Macao to test for coronavirus before departure starting from Saturday local time, according to a statement published on the country's health and aged care department.
The decision came one day after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed that it plans to end mandatory COVID-19 tests for travelers from China.
Previously, Japan also dropped a requirement for Chinese travelers to take a test for the virus.
Those countries' action to remove such requirements came after China won a decisive victory over the virus following large-scale outbreaks of the epidemic across the country in December and January after the government optimized coronavirusresponse.
Australia's Health Minister Mark Butler said that dropping coronavirus testing requirements on Chinese travelers is a "sensible, measured" decision based on China's decreasing coronavirus cases, regular data updates on case numbers, and the fact that Australia has strengthened capacity to detect and respond to emerging variants of concern within Australia of international origin, according to the statement.
China's tourism websites have showed that there are multiple flights operating between the Chinese mainland and Australia currently. For example, one-way tickets from Shanghai to Sydney range from about 3,000 yuan ($430) to about 10,000 yuan on Friday, according to qunar.com.
China's outbound travel market has rebounded quickly with the stabilization of the country’s COVID situation and resumption of international flights. According to a report of the China Tourism Academy in February, Chinese tourists are expected to make more than 90 million outbound trips in 2023, returningto about 30 percent of pre-coronavirus levels.
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