Japan has proposed to South Korea and China holding three-way phone consultations among their health authorities to jointly work on containing the spread of the novel coronavirus. 

Japan’s Asahi Shimbun quoted a Japanese government official as saying on Friday that the head of Japan’s National Security Secretariat(NSS), Shigeru Kitamura, made the proposal on Wednesday when he met with the South Korean and Chinese ambassadors to Japan.  

Kitamura stressed the need to strengthen sharing of information among the three countries, calling the COVID-19 outbreak a national crisis for all three.  

In particular, the daily said that Kitamura had asked for the understanding of South Korea’s Ambassador to Japan Nam Kwan-pyo over Tokyo’s new entry restrictions against South Korea, stressing that the move was not politically motivated.