Is the 2014 World Cup to blame for the Zika virus?
With the Olympics coming up, how will Brazil deal with mosquito madness?
By Maham Javaid
The Aedes aegypti mosquito has struck again. This time the mosquito, which has made news before for spreading the dengue, chikungunya and yellow fever viruses across the world, is now carrying the Zika virus.
Health officials first detected Zika, which has been linked to birth defects, in Brazil in May 2015 and it has since spread to 21 countries in North and South America and the Caribbean. No treatment or vaccine is yet available for the virus, so countries in the A. aegypti’s path have been doubling efforts to eradicate the mosquitoes along with issuing a first-of-its-kind warning: Women in some of the affected countries are being advised against getting pregnant.
Since its discovery in 1947 in Africa, the Zika virus has caused a series of short-lived outbreaks in Asia and the Pacific Islands, but the current outbreak marks the first time the virus is affecting millions, according to Lee Riley, a professor of epidemiology and infectious diseases at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health.
“There is very little that we know about Zika,” Riley said. “We do know that Zika has never caused an epidemic before. There is speculation that maybe the virus has evolved over the years and that’s why it’s spreading so rapidly.”
Public health experts, including Riley, believe the virus reached Brazil through one of two major sporting events the country hosted in 2014. Soccer fans from across the globe traveled to the World Cup in Brazil in June and July of 2014.
“Maybe it was an athlete who brought the virus or maybe it was a spectator,” Riley said.
Another possibility, experts say, is that the virus may have arrived in Brazil when athletes from French Polynesia, New Caledonia, the Cook Islands and Easter Island arrived for the Va’a World Sprint Canoeing World Championships in Brazil in August 2014.
Mass gatherings — for sports or religious purposes — and the spread of infectious diseases have long gone hand-in-hand. In 1817, a Hindu pilgrimage along the Ganges River called the Kumbh Mela triggered an epidemic of cholera that spread from the Ganges to Kolkata and Mumbai. The disease then traveled to Europe with British soldiers and sailors.
In 1987 more than 6,000 attendees of the Rainbow Family meeting in North Carolina became ill with an intestinal disease, Shigella sonnei, because of poor sanitation.
More recently, in 2010 at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canadians took home 14 gold medals and 85 cases of measles. Public health experts blamed international visitors as the likely sources of the outbreak. Interestingly, none of the victims had actually gone to the sporting event. Those who contracted the disease were either too young to be vaccinated, or adults who hadn’t received their booster shots for measles vaccines. About 23% of the cases affected the indigenous community in British Columbia, which has historically had less access to health care.
Arthur Reingold, the head of epidemiology at UC Berkeley School of Public Health said there would likely be a similar risk in the upcoming Olympics in Rio.
“The athletes and spectators who are coming from across the globe will stay at nice hotels so they will not be the ones at risk,” he said. It will be the indigenous communities and the less privileged neighborhoods across Rio and the rest of Brazil that will be vulnerable.
While public health experts are sure of the connection between epidemics and mass gatherings, they say there is also no way to curb diseases from spreading at sporting and religious events that attract people from all over the world.
“Fundamentally, it’s not tenable to screen every traveler for every disease,” Reingold said. “I cannot imagine anyone coming up with such a scheme, much less implementing it.”
Brazil’s health minister has declared that the country is “losing badly” to Zika. Apart from angering many Brazilians, the statement has also raised concerns for the Olympics. Reingold said Brazil’s government will have to find where the mosquitoes are breeding and clean up all of that standing water.
And yet, history tells public health experts there’s only so much governments can do. “There’s no such thing as a foolproof way to prevent an epidemic,” said Riley. “Infectious diseases always find a way to move around.”
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