OTTAWA — Statistics Canada says the number of people travelling to Canada in January was up from a year earlier, but remained a fraction of where it was before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Statistics Canada says Canadian residents returned from 690,200 trips to the U.S. in January, up from 265,000 a year earlier, but far below the 3.1 million trips in January 2020.

Meanwhile the number of Canadian residents returning from visiting overseas totalled 463,700 in January, up from 160,500 in January 2021, but down from 1.4 million in January 2020.

As COVID-19 cases surged at the end of last year, Ottawa advised Canadians on Dec. 15 to avoid non-essential travel outside of Canada, and, on Dec. 21, required all travellers entering Canada to provide a negative COVID-19 molecular test.

However in recent weeks Canada’s travel restrictions have loosened, and are set to ease again starting April 1, 2022 with the removal of the pre-arrival COVID test requirement, at least for fully vaccinated travellers.