Japan to relax COVID-19 border controls with 20,000 daily international arrivals

Next month, Japan will relax its COVID-19 border restrictions, raising the daily cap on foreign visits to 20,000 people. The government wants to change the COVID-19 testing requirements and quarantine policies, categorizing infected nations and regions into three groups.

Japan will not test or quarantine visitors from the category with the lowest illness rate. 80 percent of the competitors, according to Matsuno, will fall into that category. Negative test results are still necessary prior to travel.

According to Matsuno, the evaluation will facilitate visitor entry. Recently, the infection situation in Japan has stabilized.

According to a government official, Japan will declare that masks are not always required in public places if individuals are not chatting. To stop the spread of the Omicron coronavirus strain, Japan closed its borders to non-resident visitors last year.

The administration steadily increased the daily cap to 10,000 in recent months.