With a month to go until the Tokyo Olympics and a state of emergency freshly lifted in most of the country, Japan is seeing relatively low coronavirus case counts after a surge last month. But the country’s low vaccination rate, especially compared with other rich countries, and variants on the rise there have prompted some public health experts in recent weeks to express concerns about the Games or call for them to be canceled.
As athletes and coaches from almost every country in the world prepare to descend on Japan, where tens of thousands of residents will work at or attend the Games, just 7 percent of the country’s residents are fully vaccinated, compared with around a quarter of the population or more in most other rich countries.