With just over a year to go until the Tokyo Olympics, medical experts say the event could pose a grave health risk to the public, predicting that few people will have coronavirus antibodies and that vaccines will not be widely available.

Olympic organizers and the central and Tokyo metropolitan governments are scrambling for steps to prevent the pandemic from derailing the event. But they say concrete plans are unlikely to shape up before the end of this year.

The global death toll from COVID-19, the illness caused by the new coronavirus, reached half a million late last month, and cases topped 10 million.

Although Tokyo on Friday reported 243 infections, a record high for a single day, Japan has largely avoided the disastrous effects seen in other countries.

That has scientists and medical experts concerned about how things might look next summer, a year after the Tokyo Games were postponed.

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