{"id":13902,"date":"2026-06-10T18:01:49","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T18:01:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=13902"},"modified":"2026-06-10T18:01:49","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T18:01:49","slug":"health-sleuths-are-watching-for-disease-threats-during-the-world-cup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=13902","title":{"rendered":"Health sleuths are watching for disease threats during the World Cup"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

By LAURAN NEERGAARD, AP Medical Writer<\/strong><\/p>\n

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 While millions of soccer fans cheer or groan over World Cup matches spanning North America, health officials will be on high alert for germs.<\/p>\n

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A heat wave may be the most obvious health threat. But infectious diseases can spread in a crowd, and experts are set to scrutinize wastewater, hospital visits, even social media for any signs that an outbreak might be brewing.<\/p>\n

Measles, one of the most contagious diseases, is among the top concerns, sparking a warning this week from the Pan American Health Organization, PAHO. With a nearly six-week stretch of packed stadiums, bars and tourist sites in 16 cities, officials are on the lookout for a long list of infections, from the stomach bug norovirus to mosquito-borne dengue fever.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is truly a marathon,\u201d said Palak Raval-Nelson, Philadelphia\u2019s health commissioner.<\/p>\n

The mass gatherings come at a tense moment for budget-strapped health agencies in the U.S. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, hit hard by Trump administration staffing cuts, already was grappling with a growing Ebola outbreak in central Africa and a cruise ship hantavirus outbreak. While CDC officials have advised state and local health departments behind the scenes, its expected World Cup disease surveillance dashboard still was \u201cin final development\u201d days before games began, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur public health professionals are pretty stretched,\u201d said global health specialist Rebecca Katz of Georgetown University, who is leading an unusual new hub to help.<\/p>\n

At the Health Security Operations Center, a joint effort between Georgetown and MedStar Health, workers are analyzing data from around the country so they can alert health authorities, even emergency rooms, to any early signs of trouble. The center is issuing daily \u201csituation reports\u201d about disease trends around World Cup host cities and team base camps to several hundred local and federal public health groups, emergency management and hospital officials and others who\u2019ve signed up.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important that we don\u2019t become alarmist,\u201d said MedStar emergency medicine specialist Dr. Shane Kappler. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to be the insurance policy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Measles is a top concern for potential World Cup spread<\/h4>\n

Already more than 2,000 people in the U.S. have come down with measles this year, nearly as many as during all of last year, according to the CDC. Patients can spread measles before the rash appears and they realize they\u2019re sick. Not too long ago, the U.S. seldom saw measles except from international travel by unvaccinated people.<\/p>\n

Now with frequent U.S. outbreaks, \u201cactually a lot of our international partners are worried about measles being exported to them after the games,\u201d said Georgetown\u2019s Katz.<\/p>\n

Measles is spreading in Canada, too, and has exceeded 11,000 cases in Mexico, according to PAHO. It\u2019s urging soccer fans to be sure they\u2019re vaccinated, with a health campaign saying a single measles patient can spread the virus to up to 18 unprotected people.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

Is Ebola a concern at the World Cup?<\/h4>\n

Brown University\u2019s Dr. Craig Spencer, who survived Ebola while working in the West Africa outbreak over a decade ago, said he\u2019s repeatedly asked about the risk of Ebola during the World Cup \u2014 but \u201cfor me, Ebola is not the No. 1 or No. 2 or even No. 3 threat.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cI am concerned about importation of measles, I am much more concerned about the importation of other infectious threats that may not seem as scary to us as Ebola,\u201d Spencer said.<\/p>\n

Many health experts agree that the risk of Ebola spreading in the U.S. is very low. That\u2019s partly because of government travel screenings and restrictions on people recently in outbreak-affected areas. Moreover, Ebola spreads by contact with bodily fluids from someone showing symptoms, not through the air like measles or respiratory viruses.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne fortunate thing about this virus is you\u2019re most contagious when you\u2019re really quite ill. It\u2019s not like COVID, where you could be sitting next to someone who doesn\u2019t even know they\u2019re infected and perhaps contract the virus,\u201d said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of Brown\u2019s Pandemic Center.<\/p>\n

How to spot brewing diseases<\/h4>\n

People with certain viral or bacterial infections shed genetic material that sophisticated testing of wastewater can spot, an early warning system. For example, measles can appear in wastewater days before an emergency room sees its first patients.<\/p>\n

This week\u2019s surveillance reports from Katz\u2019s center note that wastewater testing recently found diarrhea-causing rotavirus, hepatitis A and the stomach bug norovirus in some parts of the U.S., something to watch as soccer crowds arrive.<\/p>\n

In Dallas, officials ramped up wastewater screening including at the international airport, casting a wide net rather than looking for specific illnesses, said Dr. Phil Huang, director of Dallas County Health and Human Services.<\/p>\n

His team also is enhancing the usual mosquito testing, checking not just for West Nile virus that regularly spreads in the U.S. but for viruses more common in other countries like dengue and chikungunya.<\/p>\n

Public health officials have been preparing for months, said Philadelphia\u2019s Raval-Nelson, including with mock emergency drills and communications with counterparts around the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to send a message that there\u2019s one key thing,\u201d she said. \u201cWe have the frameworks in place to carry out what we need to.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute\u2019s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more Mysterious disappearance of alleged Israeli spy puts Lebanese state in a tough spot<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As World Cup soccer fans gather, public health officials are monitoring for measles and other infectious disease outbreaks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13901,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-soccer"],"yoast_head":"\nHealth sleuths are watching for disease threats during the World Cup - Silicon Valley Moving Post<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=13902\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Health sleuths are watching for disease threats during the World Cup - 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