TOKYO -- Japan will resume visa-free entry for individual travelers on Oct. 11, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced Thursday in New York, bringing its border rules close to pre-pandemic norms for the first time in about two and a half years.

At present Japan only allows package tours, and requires visas for all visitors, in an effort to control the spread of COVID-19. But this has made the country more and more of an outlier, as most other economies have fully reopened to tourists.