Japan to downgrade COVID classification

Japan to downgrade COVID classification as it seeks to ‘live with the virus’

Tokyo, The Gulf Observer: Japan will downgrade the legal classification of COVID-19 this spring — bringing an end to quarantine guidelines for COVID-19 patients — and review border controls and mask recommendations, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced Friday, marking a major policy change nearly three years since the start of the pandemic.

Though the exact timing has yet to be decided, the government will downgrade COVID-19 from the current Class II to Class V under the Infectious Diseases Control Law, putting it on par with the seasonal flu, Kishida said.

The government will decide how to lift a range of pandemic measures after consulting a panel of medical experts under the health ministry, the prime minister told a news conference after meeting with ministers involved in the nation’s COVID-19 response.

“I have instructed the ministries to consult experts with the goal of changing the classification of the disease this spring,” he said. “We will step up moves toward living with the coronavirus to restore normalcy to Japan.”

Later in the day, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said, without going into details, that border controls will also be reviewed with the impending classification change. This may mean that travelers from mainland China and Macao would no longer be required to show a negative PCR test or be asked to quarantine if they test positive on arrival.

Exactly how the nation transitions to a post-pandemic normalcy remains uncertain, as it continues to see hundreds of daily deaths from COVID-19 and hospitals are packed with patients amid an eighth wave of infections.

Currently, Japan recommends the use of masks indoors, except when people are able to keep a distance of at least 2 meters from one another or there’s no conversation. Outdoors, people are only encouraged to wear masks in crowds, according to the health ministry.

The review comes long after many Western countries removed mask mandates and recommendations over the past year, though some have periodically recommended masking indoors when cases spike. Japanese officials have so far refrained from announcing an end to indoor masking entirely, given the unpredictability of the virus and the constantly mutating and highly contagious subvariants of the omicron strain.

“We will start discussions with a relaxation of mask rules in mind,” health minister Katsunobu Kato said. “But we have yet to nail down the specifics.”