Tokyo feared Games would spread COVID. Numbers suggest that didn't happen

Featuring more than 50,000 people, what amounted to possibly the largest global experiment of this kind since the pandemic began, appears to have largely worked, organisers and some scientists say, with only a sliver of those involved infected.

DO NOT TOUCH: After the Modern Pentathlon, Men's Individual - Laser Run final Jun Woongtae of South Korea (right) adjusts the face mask of  Ahmed Elgendy of Egypt.

Before the Olympics began, Japan had feared that the 2020 Games, with thousands of officials, media and athletes descending on Tokyo in the middle of a pandemic, might spread COVID-19, introduce new variants and overwhelm the medical system.

But as the Games draw near their end, the infection numbers from inside the Olympic "bubble" - a set of venues, hotels and the media centre to which those coming for the Games had been mostly confined - tell a different story.