Aug 11 (Nikkei) - Narita Airport, one of the main travel hubs for the Tokyo area, has already begun to make changes to keep travelers and workers safe in the coronavirus era.
It has been standard procedure for international arrivals at Narita to undergo thermal screening to catch potential illnesses. But the airport began requiring similar scans of domestic passengers in May to prevent them from spreading the coronavirus during their flights.
Those with a temperature of 37.5 C or above show up in pink on the thermal cameras, and could be denied boarding depending on what airline they are flying.
An announcement urging passengers to keep their distance from others played repeatedly throughout the terminal in Japanese, English, Chinese and Korean. "It's a little hard to listen to them warn me over and over to be careful. Maybe I should have just stayed home," said one traveler.
Traffic at Terminal 3, which service mostly budget carriers, has recovered somewhat from the height of the outbreak. But Terminal 2, which is mainly for international flights, is still largely empty. Staffers sitting at counters with masks and face shields seemed to have little to do. And when they had customers to deal with, masks and plexiglass barriers made communicating harder than it normally would be.
