Covid-19: Japan slightly relaxes entry restrictions at its borders

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kushida during his press conference on February 17, 2022. AP - David Mareuil

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1 min

From March 1, Japan will timidly open its borders to foreign students and workers.

Tourists will still not be allowed to visit the archipelago.

Since the start of the pandemic, Japan has adopted the strictest rules for controlling access to its territory of the G7 countries.

It is content today to soften them.

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With our correspondent in Tokyo,

Prime Minister

is only partially yielding to pressure from his business circles.

It caps the number of new arrivals in the archipelago at 5,000 per day against 3,500 at present.

Last November, he had eased, for the first time, the restrictions imposed on foreign visitors to suspend them three weeks later upon the arrival of the new Omicron variant.

Japanese business circles are already criticizing this leveling off, this trickle-down arrival of foreign businessmen, students and "trainees", workers recruited in Asia by Japanese companies suffering from a serious shortage of workforce.

In total, more than 400,000 people with visas were waiting in January to enter Japan.

Among them 150,000 students despairing, for more than a year, to integrate a Japanese university.

Some of them ended up giving up to follow university programs in South Korea.

The majority of the Japanese are opposed to the opening of their borders.

Their closure did not prevent 

.

Vaccinated at 80%, the country remains relatively spared from the pandemic.

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• Japan

• Coronavirus