There are currently 21 countries that are still closed to most U.S. visitors due to Covid:
- Bhutan
- Cameroon
- China
- Eswatini
- Falkland Islands
- Kiribati
- Lesotho
- Libya
- Macau
- Marshall Islands
- Mayotte
- Montserrat
- Nauru
- North Korea
- Syria
- Taiwan
- Turkmenistan
- Tuvalu
- Wallis and Futuna
- Western Sahara
- Yemen
There are a handful of others that require testing and quarantine of those with U.S. passports, as well as others that only require testing, but after going through that, you can visit (albeit with varying degrees of freedom).
Japan has been particularly stringent about allowing travelers and visitors only just beginning back in June. Even then, it’s with the caveat that they stay with an approved travel group, unless they’re there for business purposes (and have jumped through the appropriate hoops for either).
However nearly every month, Japan has scaled back some of its rules. More often than not, it was just increasing how many visitors could enter the country on a given day (they’re up to 20,000 per day). They also currently have to show a negative Covid test result within the last 72 hours.
However effective September 7th, entrants who have received at least one booster vaccine will no longer need to go through the pre-entry testing. There is also talk of increasing the daily cap to 50,000 visitors per day, perhaps by some time in September.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was quoted by the Associated Press as saying, “We plan to gradually ease border controls to allow entry procedures to be as smooth as those of other Group of Seven countries.
“Our fight against the virus is not easy, but we should not be too afraid and instead take into consideration the characteristics of the omicron variant,” Kishida continued. “We will speed up our responses while balancing the infection measures and social and economic activities as much as possible.”
Joe and I have been putting our Japan trip off since 2020. Hopefully, they’ll keep speeding up that response. Just sayin’. 😉
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