TOKYO, Japan — Japan will extend measures barring almost all new foreign arrivals until the end of February and reopen mass-vaccination centres as it battles an Omicron-fuelled coronavirus surge, the government said Tuesday.
“We will keep the current border control policy until the end of February while taking necessary measures from a humanitarian viewpoint and considering the national interest,” Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told reporters.
The government will also reopen large-scale vaccination centres run by the Self-Defense Forces, and ask local governments to reopen their own mass-inoculation sites to accelerate booster shots, Kishida said. But despite those efforts, the Omicron variant has been circulating locally and Japan is seeing a sharp rise in virus cases.