TOKYO/NEW DELHI: Japan has softened its suspension of all new incoming flight bookings to make it easier for citizens to return, the government said on Thursday, a day after it announced the move prompted by worries about the Omicron coronavirus variant.
The transport ministry abruptly said on Wednesday it was asking airlines to stop taking all new incoming flight reservations for a month, in a surprise move affecting citizens and foreign residents.
But on Thursday, government spokesman Hirokazu Matsuno said it would be amended.
“This request caused confusion among those affected and so the prime minister instructed the transport ministry to examine the issue and consider the needs of Japanese citizens hoping to return home,” he told reporters.
As a result, the ministry “asked airlines to cancel the blanket suspension of new reservations for international flights to accommodate Japanese hoping to return home”, he added.
Japan has had tight border restrictions throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, barring almost all foreign arrivals.
It had begun to ease those rules slightly last month to allow some students and business travellers entry, but reversed that decision after the emergence of the Omicron variant.
It has also barred all non-citizens from entering the country if they are coming from 10 southern African countries.
All arrivals in Japan must quarantine for 14 days at home, with people coming from dozens of locations required to spend between three and 10 days of that two-week period in designated facilities.
After a summer surge in cases, Japan is registering only double-digit infections nationwide most days, and has logged around 18,360 deaths during the pandemic.
Around 77 percent of the country’s population is now fully vaccinated, and booster shots began rolling out on Wednesday for people who received their second dose at least eight months
NEW VARIANT IN INDIA
Meanwhile, India announced its first two cases of the Omicron Covid variant on Thursday, months after a devastating wave of the virus killed more than 200,000 people around the country.
Top health ministry official Luv Agarwal said two men in southern Karnataka state, aged 66 and 46, had tested positive for the variant.
“As per the protocols all their primary and secondary contacts have been traced and are being tested,” he told a press briefing.
India has yet to impose new blanket international travel bans but on Monday the health ministry ordered all inbound travellers from “countries at-risk” to undergo mandatory post-arrival Covid testing, along with the random testing of other international arrivals.
The nation’s biggest city Mumbai on Wednesday imposed mandatory seven-day quarantines for all passengers arriving from at-risk countries.
Neither of the two identified cases had been in contact with each other and one had no recent travel history, authorities in Karnataka’s capital Bangalore told reporters.
Gautam Menon, a professor at India’s Ashoka University who has worked on Covid-19 modelling, said it was likely the Omicron variant entered India before it was first reported in South Africa, “since there were some delays in testing samples”.
India has the world’s second-highest number of cases, with more than 34 million confirmed infections.
Its nearly 470,000 Covid deaths are the third-highest, behind the tolls in the United States and Brazil.
But under-reporting is widespread and some studies have estimated India’s true toll could be up to ten times higher.
The country has since administered more than 1.2 billion Covid-19 vaccine doses but only around a third of the population are fully vaccinated, according to government data. – AFP
