Japan officially opened its doors to foreigners on the 8th of November. Thousands of workers and students who were not able to come into Japan for several months were waiting impatiently for this announcement.
The government has eased restrictions on entry in the wake of cases of coronavirus within Japan continuing to fall. The daily totals have been lower than 1,000 per day since the 3rd of October. No fatalities were registered on the same day for the first time since 15 months on the 7th of November.
Japan’s borders did not open for visitors from January because of the excessive infection numbers at the time. However, tourists will not be permitted to travel into Japan yet. The government will maintain the limit at 3,500 people per day for international travel. This also includes Japanese citizens.
“We will assess the effectiveness of these measures and decide whether to reopen the country for tourism by the end of the year, taking into account the infection situation,” says Isozaki Yoshihiko, deputy government spokesperson.
According to immigration, there are 370,000 people who have permission to stay in Japan but were waiting for the government. The Japanese government is also changing how it measures how serious the disease is. The new measure is more focused on the capability of medical establishments to treat patients with coronavirus.
There is a special panel of individuals who advise the current government on the virus policy. They felt that an update was necessary since vaccinations have improved a lot and the situation as a whole has undergone many changes. Hence they unveiled a new five-tier system for management.
As you can see from the chart above the bottom tier is the level zero, indicating no new infections. Whereas level four means that it infections are getting out of hand and medical facilities can no longer keep.
This panel advises the authorities to aim for level one or below. According to Omi Shigeru who acts as a head of the panel, Japan is currently on level 1 whereas summer’s fifth wave would be considered as level four.
Source: NHK
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