Japan to Loosen Its Tight Covid-19 Border Controls by March

Next month, Japan will loosen some of its tight Covid-19 border controls by increasing the daily entrance limit and reducing the quarantine time from seven to three days.

The country has prohibited non-resident visitors from late November until the end of February to tackle the spread of the Omicron version of the virus.

The daily cap for new visitors to Japan will increase from 3,500 to 5,000 next month, and foreign nationals will be allowed to enter for reasons other than tourism.

Arrivals will be quarantined for three days and must test negative for Covid on the third day.

According to a report in Kyodo News, those who have been vaccinated three times and leave areas where diseases are stabilizing will not need to quarantine.

“It is the first step in our progressive lifting of the restrictions,” Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, was cited as saying by the site.

InsideJapan, which is part of the Inside Travel Group, is pleased with the news and expects “gradual easing” of limitations in the following months.

Alastair Donnelly, a co-founder, said: “Although the announcement doesn’t mean that the doors are open again for international tourism, it does mean that there are significant moves from Japan, that we believe, will lead to opening of international tourism again.

“We expect that there will be some international travel from the early summer onwards.”