Travellers flying to England from mainland China will stop needing proof of a negative coronavirus test from April 5, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said.

In addition, voluntary Covid testing of travelling arriving at London’s Heathrow Airport from China was scrapped on Friday.

The measures were introduced in January in a bid to strengthen the UK’s ability to rapidly detect potential new variants circulating in China, amid a surge in Covid cases in the East Asian country.

The ending of this enhanced surveillance is in line with international partners

The DHSC said: “The removal of these measures comes as China has increased information sharing regarding testing, vaccination and genomic sequencing results, providing greater transparency on their domestic disease levels.

“Latest international genomics data indicates that the Covid variants observed in China continue to be the same as those already circulating in the UK.

“The Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention also reports that all regions have passed their infection peak.

“The ending of this enhanced surveillance is in line with international partners such as the EU who are reducing border measures to monitor new variants from China.

“The UK continues to work closely with international partners on global security to detect and assess new Covid variants.

“The Government will continue to maintain a range of contingency measures in reserve, which would enable detection, and swift and proportionate action, for potential new harmful variants of Covid entering the UK, should the need arise.”