Japan is set to announce on Thursday that it will ease border controls put in place to counter the spread of the coronavirus, measures that are the strictest among wealthy nations and have been slammed by business leaders and educators.
About 150,000 foreign students have been kept out of the country, along with workers desperately needed by an aging nation with a shrinking population, prompting warnings of labor shortages and damage to Japan’s international reputation.
Japan briefly eased its border rules, which have effectively kept the nation closed to non-residents for two years, late in 2021 but tightened them again just weeks later as the Omicron variant emerged overseas. Among the measures set to be announced will be raising the number of people allowed to enter Japan to 5,000 a day from the current 3,500, according to media reports. Others are likely to include shortening the required quarantine period, currently a week, to three days under certain circumstances, such as the coronavirus risk level in the nation people travel from and whether they are fully vaccinated, including a booster shot.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is expected to announce the new measures at a news conference on Thursday. They would take effect in stages from March, media reports say.