‘I cried all day’: the anguish of people locked out of Japan by Covid

Travel restrictions have stranded almost 150,000 students, workers and others hoping to join relatives

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Late last year, Pablo Ortez quit his job, sold his belongings and prepared to join his wife in Japan, where she is studying for a doctorate.

But 72 hours before he was due to leave Argentina, he checked the Japanese foreign ministry website to find that the government had imposed a near-blanket travel ban to prevent the spread of the Omicron variant of coronavirus.