The government of Japan announced today that it will close its borders to all foreign visitors from Tuesday onwards due to the Omicron variant of covid-19.

According to Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Japanese returning from nine southern African countries and from countries where infections with the new variant have been reported will have to undergo strict isolation measures according to risk.

"We will ban all (new) entries of foreigners from all over the world starting November 30," the Japanese prime minister announced.

The move comes after the Japanese government announced on Friday that it would extend the hotel quarantine to ten days for visitors arriving in Japan from Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe.

The Japanese government extended the measure this weekend to visitors arriving from Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia.