Is Japan's remarkable vaccine drive in time for Olympics?

TOKYO (AP) — After months of frustration and delay, Japan has hit the remarkable benchmark of 1 million vaccines a day. But with the Olympics set to start in less than a month, and only a small portion of the country vaccinated, a question lingers: Is it enough?

The vaccination pace is quickening even as the young remain hesitant amid an anti-vaccination misinformation campaign and officials have slowed vaccination reservations as demand outpaces supply.

Add in continued political and bureaucratic bungling and the arrival of highly contagious coronavirus variants, and there are worries that the government’s effort to ramp up vaccinations before the Olympics will fall short.

Thousands of private companies and some universities have joined the vaccination drive, complementing the government's effort to prioritize the full vaccination of elderly people by the end of July.

The acceleration is causing worries about a supply shortage, and further progress is now uncertain. Taro Kono, the minister in charge of inoculations, on Wednesday abruptly announced a temporary suspension of many new vaccination reservations, saying vaccine distribution cannot keep pace with demand.

“It's a tightrope situation,” Kono said.

Much will depend on whether the nation's young embrace the vaccination program.

Even as more people are getting the jabs, and fully inoculating the country’s 36 million senior citizens now looks likely, younger people are still largely unvaccinated, and their movements during summer vacations and the Olympics could trigger another upsurge of infections, propelled by the more contagious Delta strain, which is expected to be dominant by then, experts say.

A resurgence of cases among the young has already begun in Tokyo, which reported 619 new cases Wednesday, up from...