Japan had refused the entry of eight foreign nationals by Sunday, in line with a measure, introduced on Saturday, to strengthen immigration controls amid the spread of a new coronavirus, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said Monday.

Under the measure, the Japanese government in principle will refuse entry by foreign nationals with records of being in China's Hubei Province within 14 days of their applications to enter Japan and holders of Chinese passports issued by the province, regardless of whether they are infected with the virus, originating in Wuhan, the capital of the province.

At the Budget Committee of the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of the Diet, Japan's parliament, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that his government "has already launched efforts to develop a simple test kit (to detect the new coronavirus), with cooperation from private institutions in sight."

"The Cabinet Secretariat is leading the implementation of countermeasures beyond ministry and agency boundaries," Abe said. "We want to enhance our crisis management capabilities further by conducting constant reviews (of our systems)."

The prime minister made the remarks in response to Fumio Kishida, policy chief of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, who called on the government to strengthen its efforts to contain the coronavirus outbreak, including through a possible reorganization of related bodies.

Suga told Monday's news conference that an investigation is being conducted to identify the cause of the recent death of a male Cabinet Secretariat official who was responsible for carrying out a government program to accept Japanese returnees from Wuhan at the National Institute of Public Health in Wako, Saitama Prefecture, north of Tokyo.

"It's very regrettable that we lost a talented official," Suga said, adding, "We will try to prevent any recurrence of such cases." The Saitama prefectural police department is investigating the death of the official as a possible suicide.

Suga also said that the government will quarantine under a related law the cruise ship that carried a man found to have pneumonia blamed on the new coronavirus to Hong Kong from Yokohama, the capital of Kanagawa Prefecture, south of Tokyo, when it arrives at the Port of Yokohama later.

JIJI Press