Fully vaccinated travellers entering Canada will no longer need to show proof of a negative COVID-19 test starting April 1.
“I think it’s fair to say we’re now entering a transition phase in this pandemic,” Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos said during a Thursday media briefing, referring to the country moving past the peak of the Omicron wave.
While fully vaccinated travellers arriving in Canada will no longer have to complete a pre-entry test to enter the country, they will still need to submit their vaccination status ahead of departure via the ArriveCAN app.
Travellers can still be randomly selected to undergo a PCR test after they arrive.
Unvaccinated and partially vaccinated travellers will have to complete a PCR test upon arrival and quarantine for 14 days. They must also get tested again on day eight.
Cruise ship passengers entering Canada will still be required to be fully vaccinated. They will also need to take an antigen test no more than a day before their scheduled departure but they will no longer be required to get tested before getting off their cruise ship. PCR tests can be taken within three days of departure.
The first cruise ships of the season arrive in Victoria on April 6 and in Vancouver on April 7.
The loosening of pandemic-era restrictions on the part of Ottawa comes just under a week after B.C. dropped mask mandates for most public indoor spaces.
The province is also dropping its vaccine card program April 8.
Duclos said the positivity rate of travellers entering Canada with COVID-19 stood at 10 per cent in January but has since fallen to 1 per cent.
While encouraging Canadians get their COVID-19 booster shot, the health minister also reaffirmed that the definition of fully vaccinated means those who have received two doses of a vaccine approved by regulators.
Canada has been flirting with loosened border restrictions for months.
U.S. authorities opened their border to fully vaccinated Canadian travellers on November 8, however, Ottawa still required all travellers coming over the land border to produce a negative PCR test.
The Americans have no such requirement for those arriving at their border.
Ottawa lifted that PCR requirement Nov. 30 before implementing it once more on Dec. 21 amid surging cases of the Omicron variant.
By Feb. 28 Canada also began accepting rapid antigen tests, which are significantly cheaper than PCR tests, at the border to allow fully vaccinated travellers to show proof they were COVID-19 negative.
—With a file from Glen Korstrom
