BEIJING, China – Mainland Chinese residents will be allowed to visit Macau using an online visa system as of Tuesday, officials said, streamlining travel to the world’s largest gambling hub after more than two years of pandemic restrictions.

Macau is the only place in China where casinos are legal and the former Portuguese colony once dwarfed even Las Vegas for the scale of bets placed every month.

But China’s strict Covid-19 controls have laid waste to Macau’s gaming sector, hammering the city’s economy.

Beijing will launch an electronic visa system from November 1, China’s Immigration Administration announced on Monday in a statement.

For the past two and a half years, visitors from the mainland have been required to submit detailed, in-person applications to visit the Chinese territory, with approvals typically limited to essential business travel.

Monday’s announcement paves the way for mainland travel groups — which once made up the vast majority of punters — to return to the roulette tables.

China’s immigration authorities said they now judged the Covid situation in Macau to be “stable”, even after health officials locked down a large casino complex on Sunday over a handful of infections.

Then on Monday, Macau’s health minister Lo Iek-long announced that all 680,000 residents in the city must undergo a PCR test on Tuesday as recent infections increased to a total of five cases.

A newly confirmed case involved a man who works in Macau and lives in the adjacent mainland city of Zhuhai.

Residents must also take daily rapid antigen tests until Tuesday, the government said.

The city remains largely closed to overseas visitors and maintains a seven-day hotel quarantine policy.

And even if pandemic measures are fully lifted, it is unlikely Macau’s casinos will see a return to their busiest days, analysts said.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has spearheaded an anti-corruption campaign that has increased scrutiny of the high-rollers and officials who travel to gamble in Macau, where cases of money laundering are common.