The US will impose mandatory COVID-19 tests on travellers from China, joining India, Italy, Japan and Taiwan in taking measures after Beijing’s decision to lift stringent virus policies.

From January 5, all air passengers aged two years and older will require a negative result no more than two days before departure from China, Hong Kong or Macao, US health officials said on Wednesday (local time).

Passengers who test positive more than 10 days before a flight can provide documentation of recovery in lieu of the negative test result, the federal officials said.

In an abrupt change of policy, China this month began dismantling the world’s strictest COVID-19 regime of lockdowns and extensive testing, putting its battered economy on course for a complete re-opening next year.

The lifting of restrictions, following widespread protests against them, means COVID is spreading largely unchecked and likely infecting millions of people a day, according to some international health experts.

Beijing has faced international criticism that its official COVID data and its tally of deaths are inconsistent with the scale of its outbreak.

Some global health experts have said the virus could infect as many as one million people a day and international modelling groups have predicted China could experience two million deaths or more.

Earlier this week, US officials cited “the lack of transparent data” from China, a persistent complaint from Washington about China’s handling of the pandemic, as the reason for considering its own travel restrictions.

The US and Chinese approaches to battling COVID have been markedly different.

High infection rates in the US early in the pandemic gave Beijing room to argue its model of strict COVID prevention measures had saved lives.

China has struggled to vaccinate its elderly population and has yet to authorise foreign mRNA vaccines.

Its overall vaccination rate is more than 90 per cent. But the rate for adults who have had booster shots drops to 57.9 per cent and to 42.3 per cent for people aged 80 and older, according to Chinese government data.

The country has nine domestically-developed COVID vaccines approved for use. None has been updated to target the highly infectious Omicron variant.

In June, the US rescinded a 17-month-old requirement that people arriving in the country by air test negative for COVID-19.

It still requires most non-US citizens to be vaccinated against COVID to travel to the US.

-AAP