When Anne-Sophie Mpacko recently learned that Japan’s borders had started opening, she was excited to begin her studies at Keio University, where she had been accepted as a doctoral student in clinical psychology.
Her plans to start studies on campus in the spring were derailed when the novel coronavirus began to spread around the globe. In the meantime, she has been in France, waiting to make the trip. Due to the long drawn-out uncertainty, “this has been the most stressful experience of my life,” she says.
While looking at the guidelines for entering Japan, however, she came across an unwelcome requirement: a certification of having tested negative for COVID-19 from a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test that had been “conducted within 72 hours of departure time.”