Japan refuses entry of 5 foreigners over coronavirus

February 3, 2020

Tokyo--Japan refused the entry of five foreign nationals on Saturday in accordance with a measure, implemented the same day, to strengthen immigration controls amid the spread of a new coronavirus, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said Monday.

Under the measure, the Japanese government in principle will refuse entry by foreign nationals with records of being in China's Hubei Province within 14 days of their application to enter Japan and holders of Chinese passports issued by the province.

Hubei is the home province of Wuhan, where the virus originated.

At the Budget Committee of the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of parliament, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that the government "has already launched efforts to develop a simple test kit (to detect the new coronavirus), with cooperation with private institutions in sight."

"The Cabinet Secretariat is leading the implementation of countermeasures beyond ministry and agency boundaries," Abe said. "We'd like to enhance our crisis management capabilities further by conducting constant reviews (of our systems)."

The prime minister made the remarks in response to ruling Liberal Democratic Party policy chief Fumio Kishida's call for the reorganization of related government bodies to shore up state efforts to contain the coronavirus outbreak.

Separately, Suga told Monday's news conference that an investigation is being conducted to identify the cause of the recent death of a male Cabinet Secretariat official who was responsible for carrying out a government program to accept Japanese returnees from Wuhan at the National Institute of Public Health in Wako, Saitama Prefecture, north of Tokyo.

"It's very regrettable that we lost a talented official," Suga said, eager to prevent any recurrence of such cases. The Saitama prefectural police are investigating the death of the official as a possible suicide.

Suga also said that the government will quarantine the cruise ship that carried a man with pneumonia caused by the new coronavirus to Hong Kong from Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, south of Tokyo, when it arrives at the Port of Yokohama. Jiji Press