The Zika virus is starting to have a major impact on sports, starting with the Olympics. Spread by the Aedes mosquito, it often results in mild or no symptoms, but "may spread from a pregnant women to the baby. This may result in microcephaly and other severe brain problems.[9][10] Zika infections in adults can result in Guillain-Barré syndrome." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zika_virus) and is now considered a pandemic (widespread on several continents). Although 80% of those struck by this disease suffer only no or mild symptoms and may not even know they have it, the disease can be spread to others through sex and blood transfusions, thereby increasing its global spread. People in Canada and the United States have already caught the disease in this manner from those who have traveled to Latin America and the Caribbean and passed it on to offspring.
As a result many athletes are becoming concerned about going to sports events in the Caribbean and Latin America. So far 388 cases have occurred in the US, all related travel to other countries, including 33 pregnancies. (http://www.cdc.gov/zika/geo/united-states.html)
There was also concern expressed by an expert in the disease on PBS that the carrying virus, Aedes, can survive in the southern US.
Well before the Zika epidemic began in Brazil last year, Olympics organizers knew they would face a challenge in keeping the approximately 16,000 athletes and 600,000 visitors to Rio de Janiero healthy. ...
Freed from their natural environs, we know that up to half of all travelers engage in casual sex, which can also transmit Zika if they don't use condoms. Travelers can also spread Zika to sexual partners back home, or to native mosquitoes who will transmit it locally. While Brazil will be enjoying its mild winter this August, many travelers to the Rio de Janeiro Olympics will return to Northern Hemisphere countries such as the United States precisely when mosquito populations are peaking.
Brazil is launching a herculean effort to fumigate Rio for mosquitoes, and most of the Olympics events will be held in that one city, but it has a native population of 12.9 million sharing a varied geography that includes rain forest and beaches. The hardy Aedes aegypti mosquitoes that carry Zika can reproduce even within a dab of water lying in an overturned bottle cap.
Brazilian leaders have shown a willingness to get as creative as the mosquitoes, having been among the first regions to deploy genetically modified mosquitoes and exploring other mosquito control options as well.
Should the Olympics be canceled or postponed?
Prominent voices have called on Brazil and the International Olympic Committee to call off this year's games. New York University bioethicist Art Caplan said Brazil is being irresponsible with public health. The country shouldn't be "trying to run an Olympics and battle an epidemic at the same time."
The U.S. Olympic committee apparently told athletes who are concerned about their own health to skip the games if they want to, and soccer star Hope Solo has gone on record saying she won't go unless the situation changes. We're also seeing other sporting events, like the PGA's Latin American tour, postpone upcoming dates.
But so far Rio stands defiant against the naysayers and the mosquitoes. The games' spokesman told Conde Nast Traveler last week that cancellation "has never been mentioned. No way." ...
Some experts in public health and infectious disease are supporting Brazil's decision. Dr. Mary Wilson of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, currently working with University of California, San Francisco, said the fact that the games are held in one city, and during the colder months, means officials should be able to reduce the risk of Zika to an acceptable level.
Dr. Daniel Lucey of Georgetown's O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law similarly said that Brazil is up to the task, and that "the world has an opportunity to respond better, stronger, faster to this epidemic" than officials did with Ebola. Eskild Petersen, editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Infectious Diseases, said "Controlling Zika at present is a problem of mosquito control and once the authorities get that working, the risk will be reduced."
On the other hand, Dr. Kamran Khan, an infectious disease physician and scientist based at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, thinks some people attending the games will become infected with Zika and "inadvertently introduce the virus back to their home countries" because the Northern Hemisphere will be in summertime. "Even one chance event could cause local transmission" back home, he said. Khan's research specialty involves the risks associated with mass migrations and he is the founder of BlueDot, a privately held company that exploits big data to model and mitigate infectious disease outbreaks.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/12/health/zika-olympics-threat/
As of early 2016, a widespread outbreak of Zika was ongoing, primarily in the Americas. The outbreak began in April 2015 in Brazil, and has spread to other countries in South America, Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean. In January 2016, the WHO said the virus was likely to spread throughout most of the Americas by the end of the year;[73] and in February 2016, the WHO declared the cluster of microcephaly and Guillain–Barré syndrome cases reported in Brazil – strongly suspected to be associated with the Zika outbreak – a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.[6][74][75][76] It is estimated that 1.5 million people have been infected by Zika in Brazil,[77] with over 3,500 cases of microcephaly reported between October 2015 and January 2016.[78]
A number of countries have issued travel warnings, and the outbreak is expected to significantly impact the tourism industry.[6][79] Several countries have taken the unusual step of advising their citizens to delay pregnancy until more is known about the virus and its impact on fetal development.[17]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zika_virus
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