Some passengers arriving on international flights into Tokyo Narita Airport (NRT) are being made to sleep in cardboard beds while they wait for COVID-19 test results according to social media posts from travellers who have gone through the process. In some cases, test results can take up to two days to be returned before passengers are allowed to leave the airport.
At the start of April, passengers from more than 70 countries were indefinitely banned from entering Japan in an attempt to stem the spread of COVID-19. The border restrictions and slump in travel demand caused by the crisis means the number of flights arriving into Tokyo are few and far between but some passengers are still making their way to the Japenese capital.
All of those arrivals are now expected to go through a stringent screening process for the novel Coronavirus which includes a nasal swab test. One traveller said it took several hours to even be let off the plane when they arrived at Narita airport before going through the screening.
All passengers have to agree to go into self-isolation before their test results are returned but with public transport strictly off-limits, passengers must have someone able to pick them up from the airport. If they don’t, they’ll be expected to wait in an airport hotel until their results are returned.
Unfortunately, many of the hotels are either full or unavailable so officials have put up cardboard bedrooms in a baggage reclaim hall. Passengers must wait here until they receive their test results… a process that can take up to two days.
It doesn’t look like particularly luxurious but one passenger said the camp bed was surprisingly comfortable, although the lights remained on full brightness day and night.
In the last few days, Japan Airline said it would slash its international schedule by 94 per cent for the month of June. Japan has recently declared a state of emergency in seven prefectures, including the greater Tokyo region, to contain the Coronavirus outbreak.
