Japan to quarantine visitors from South Korea, China for two weeks over coronavirus
This picture taken on March 4, 2020 shows Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe arriving to attend a upper house budget committee session at parliament in Tokyo. - Japan will quarantine people coming from China and South Korea for two weeks on arrival to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus, the country's prime minister said on March 5. (Photo by Kazuhiro NOGI / AFP)
Japan will quarantine people coming from China and South Korea for two weeks on arrival to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus, the country's prime minister said Thursday.
"We will strengthen immigration quarantines on people from the two countries," Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told a cabinet-level taskforce meeting on the virus.
"We will ask them to stay in designated areas for two weeks and not to use public transport in the country," Abe added, saying the measures would come into force from March 9 and last at least until the end of the month.
Abe said the measures were aimed at "relieving people's concerns" and preventing a further spread of the virus.
The government is calling for tourists from China, where the virus emerged, and South Korea, which has been hard hit by the outbreak, to put off travel to Japan and will cancel visas for travelers from the two countries, Abe said.
"In order to reduce the amount of inbound travel from China and South Korea, we will limit arrival destinations for aircraft from the two countries to Narita and Kansai airports," he said.
"We will suspend transport of passengers by ship and cancel temporary and multiple-entry visas that have already been issued."
Earlier in the day, Japan said a state visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping had been postponed as preventing the outbreak of the new coronavirus was "the biggest challenge" for the two countries.
Xi had been expected to make the state visit in the spring, the first by a Chinese leader to Japan since 2008.
More than 95,000 people have been infected and over 3,200 have died worldwide from COVID-19, which has now reached about 80 countries and territories. (AFP)