Japan Could Ease COVID-19 Entry Restrictions by End of February

One of the most difficult countries in the world to visit during the pandemic might be relaxing some of its entry restrictions at the end of this month, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida reportedly mentioned this past weekend.

According to the Associated Press, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told reporters this past Saturday during an official trip to Tokyo’s Haneda International Airport to survey quarantine areas and the airport’s vaccine rollout for airline personnel that “I plan to look into easing the border controls,” but didn’t offer a strict timeline, only that he will decide to relax the rules or not based on the impact of the Omicron variant in and outside of Japan, as well as quarantine measures in different countries.

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The current entry restrictions remain in place through the end of February. Any changes to them would be made then.

Japan has been one of the hardest countries to enter, banning tourists and continuing to disallow most international students and business travelers from entering, too, causing students and those with business in the country to protest to the government, citing the restrictions as hampering the country’s economic recovery.

Currently, the country is reporting quite a large number of new cases each day, with over 83,000 new cases confirmed on February 15; Japan is the second-highest nation in the world for positive COVID-19 infections. The United States is first, with over 136,000 new infections yesterday, according to Our World in Data.

For information on current travel restrictions in Japan and the rest of the world, please visit our interactive map.

For more information about travel to Japan, please click here.