US sewage could cause disease outbreak during World Cup
Epidemiologists will be busy analyzing sewage and social media with the aim of keeping football fans and the general public safe from serious illness during the World Cup, one of the biggest and most diverse mass events ever held on a global scale.
A Washington, D.C.-based public health team plans to monitor wastewater and internet chatter to detect and track infectious diseases if they emerge in any of the U.S. or Canadian cities that will host World Cup players, their matches and millions of spectators, organizers said.
The 39-day event begins in Mexico this Thursday (11). More than 6.5 million football fans are expected from more than 100 countries to watch 104 games in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
The scale of the event and the international travel involved pose a heightened risk of rapid disease transmission at a time when already stretched U.S. public health resources are facing outbreaks of measles, Ebola and hantavirus at home and abroad, health security experts say.
The Trump administration's budget and personnel cuts, along with the U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization, have exacerbated these challenges, according to organizers of the new disease monitoring initiative.
Genetic threads
To provide real-time data on potential threats, the newly formed team of public health experts transformed a Georgetown University laboratory into an epidemiological command post. The facility brings together academic institutions, non-profit organizations and private companies working in support of government agencies.
The team is already preparing a daily situation report to flag emerging risks and any immediate need for action to hospital emergency managers and public health authorities at local, state, federal and international levels, as well as to FIFA, football's governing body and organizer of the World Cup.
The operations center, launched in collaboration with regional hospital network MedStar Health, also serves as a testbed for future events, including the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. MedStar is home to one of 13 biocontainment units in the country.
Advanced wastewater analysis, using DNA and RNA sequencing to find genetic sequences from a variety of microbes without the need for laboratory culture, is a key element in monitoring infectious disease threats, said Rebecca Katz, director of Georgetown University's Center for Global Health Science and Security and head of the new disease surveillance effort.
"It's incredibly powerful," Katz said. His team is receiving this data from collection sites in the US and Canada, as well as several other health monitoring sources in the three World Cup host countries.
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From Ebola to measles
The detection of disease-causing microorganisms in wastewater can signal an imminent outbreak, giving health authorities time to alert doctors to the symptoms of diseases that could be misdiagnosed and to urge the public to take precautions.
The current Ebola crisis in Africa has received considerable media attention. But Katz said the often fatal hemorrhagic fever poses a "very low risk to the general public" in North America. The World Cup team and its support staff, arriving from the Democratic Republic of Congo, the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak, are undergoing preventative quarantine in Belgium before traveling to the United States, although most of the players were in Europe at the time of the outbreak.
Katz said his team would pay special attention to the spread of measles, which is approaching a record number of cases in the U.S. this year - about 2,000 so far - and has resurfaced in parts of Mexico and Canada.
Additional risks are posed by mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue, also known as "breakbone fever", and a close relative, chikungunya. Ambas têm origem nos trópicos e podem ser trazidas por viajantes infectados e, em seguida, transmitidas por mosquitos.
Katz recrutou 20 colegas, além de contar com o apoio e a assistência pro bono de outras 30 entidades para seu centro de operações. These include several wastewater monitoring companies that collect and analyze sewage samples and share their data with Katz's team free of charge.
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Social listening
Other important tools include tracking anonymized data from electronic health records and searching open-source social media platforms for information that points to transmission hotspots, Katz said.
She cited a previous example of public health officials identifying an outbreak of gastrointestinal illness from social media comments about a sudden increase in toilet paper sales.
The Georgetown team will reinforce the work of several U.S. agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Strategic Preparedness and Response Administration, Katz said.
Financial support for the center came from a small family foundation and Georgetown University, along with in-kind contributions from partners such as the University of Nebraska.
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Source: CNN