JAPAN has decided to raise the daily quota of people entering the country from 3,500 to 5,000 starting from Nov 26.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said the decision was based on the capacity of quarantine checks and preventive measures against infectious diseases currently in place.
According to an Asahi Shimbun news report, the new quota is aimed at dealing with an expected increase in the number of arrivals as the government has started allowing businessmen, students and technical intern trainees to enter Japan under certain conditions since Nov 8.
“The number of new infections currently remains low, but we will promptly respond to any deterioration in the infection situation, such as the spread of new variants,” Matsuno said.
He added that the government will continue to consider what measures it can take to ease entry restrictions further.
Meanwhile, Kyodo News reports that Japan has inoculated 75.7 per cent of its population with two doses of Covid-19 vaccine.
It is the highest among the Group of Seven industrialised nations, according to government data released on Thursday.
With a population of around 125 million, Japan had been trailing many leading democracies such as the United States but it has now even overtaken Canada, which had the highest inoculation rate of 75.5 per cent.
New Covid-19 cases have also sharply decreased in Japan as its vaccine rollout that started earlier this year gathered pace, with 163 new cases confirmed across the country on Thursday, compared to a peak of over 25,000 reported in August.
The Health, Labour and Welfare Ministry said the number of severe Covid-19 cases have also been on the decline recently, with only 76 cases on Thursday.
According to Kyodo, government data showed that the total number of Covid-19 shots provided in Japan reached 195.32 million.
The number of people who received at least one shot rose to 99.4 million, or 78.5 per cent of the population.
The number of people who had a second shot climbed to 95.91 million, and the rate of fully inoculated people aged 65 or older surpassed 91 per cent, according to the data.
The University of Oxford’s Our World in Data project showed that Italy ranked third among G-7 nations after Japan and Canada, with a vaccination rate of 72.7 per cent as of Wednesday.
In terms of the rate of people who received at least one Covid-19 vaccination shot, Canada tops the list at 79 per cent.
The G-7 also includes Britain, France, Germany and the United States.
Other than the G-7 members, eight nations, including Singapore and Spain, reached higher fully vaccinated rates than Japan, at 91.9 per cent and 80.2 per cent, respectively.
Source: New Straits Times
