Japan will create an entity for infectious disease experts similar to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and bolster its crisis response, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida says.
More than 35 percent of people in Japan feel lonely and isolated due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with young people in their 20s and 30s hit harder than the elderly as the result of limited social interaction, a government survey shows.
Japan will relax COVID-19 border controls in March by raising the daily cap on entrants and cutting the quarantine period from seven days to three for both Japanese and foreign nationals, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida says.
The number of foreign visitors to Japan in 2021 dropped to 245,900, the lowest since 1964 when comparable data became available, as the country enforced tighter border controls amid the coronavirus pandemic, government data show.