The Japanese government plans to issue Vaccine Passports by the end of July 2021 according to the Katsunobu Kato (Chief Cabinet Secretary).
The aim of this passport is to prove that a person is fully vaccinated and the document should include information like date of vaccination and the name of the manufacturer of the vaccine (Pfizer for example). The certificate will be written in Japanese and in English.
The certificate will be paper-based, even if a digital version can follow at a later stage.
The goal of this document is to ease the access to certain countries that would allow travellers to enter their borders if they are vaccinated. But it’s important to say that at the moment, it’s unclear which countries will accept vaccinated people from Japan.
We can also note that this vaccine passport will be available for both Japanese people and foreigners residing in Japan.
As of today, 20.7 million people (16% of the population) got their first dose of vaccine in Japan and 8 million (6.4%) are fully vaccinated (2 doses).
The main focus of this vaccine passport is international travel but the government is exploring the idea to use it for domestic travel. Indeed, the coronavirus cases are usually concentrated in highly populated cities / prefectures and the vaccine passport may limit the spread of the virus nationwide.
Following this program, a fair question could be: is Japan going to accept vaccinated tourists in the near future? No information has been issued for the moment and we will keep you updated if a similar project is started for international tourists coming to Japan.
Sugoii Japan Team