The Rescued Thai Soccer Team, Bats and USAID

In this soggy saga with a successful ending, our work in emerging disease surveillance played a behind-the-scenes role

USAID/PREDICT completes a sampling visit to Ratchaburi Province in Thailand. Since 2009, that project has worked globally to collect, test and analyze samples from humans, domestic animals and wildlife — including bats. / Richard Nyberg, USAID

Caves are home to more than just rocks and standing pools of water. Bats and other animals are known to live in formations like the Tham Luang cave in Thailand where the Thai youth soccer team was trapped for two weeks last month. In scenes that captured the world’s attention, the team was successfully rescued from the cave.

But the work did not end there.

Upon their rescue, the boys were quarantined in a hospital to ensure that they did not develop any infections — including viruses that could be lethal in humans — as a result of a cut or scratch that would have allowed an infectious microbe to enter their bodies. This could have resulted from exposure to bats and their droppings, inhaling fungal spores or contact with contaminated water. Bats have been found to host diseases like Nipah, SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) and Ebola virus, each of which can be deadly when infecting human cells.

The Thai government requested support from USAID/PREDICT’s partner laboratory in Thailand to screen for viral pathogens in specimens from the soccer team. The government will pay for all testing using both the USAID/PREDICT tests along with other testing schemes. Testing has already commenced to monitor that the children and their coach are free from any potential viral threats.

In June, the USAID-backed project conducted testing in Ratchaburi Province on both bats and human, and also witnessed a few bats in flight from one of the region’s caves. / Richard Nyberg, USAID

Since 2009, USAID/PREDICT has worked globally to collect, test and analyze samples from humans, domestic animals and wildlife, including bats, in parts of the world with the highest risk of zoonoses, which are diseases transmitted from animals to human populations. As communities grow and increasingly encroach on remaining forest and natural habitat, people come into more frequent contact with wildlife, providing more opportunities for spillover of diseases deadly to humans and animals.

Testing methods developed by PREDICT have been deployed to 30 countries to screen for over 24 different viral families.

In Southeast Asia, PREDICT’s One Health teams work with local veterinarians, lab workers and doctors to safely and humanely capture wildlife species, collect samples and test them for known and new potential viruses that may be a threat to animals and people, and to help determine which illnesses may be circulating or shared between populations in a particular region.

PREDICT collaborates with scientists in USAID partner countries in joint human and animal sampling and outbreak response ventures that breed discoveries, such as that of a never-before-seen virus in Myanmar and Nipah in Malaysia. These discoveries are made by using existing techniques and developing new methods to screen for diseases that could live in a sample collected from people or wildlife, and are complemented with epidemiological and anthropological data that help shed light on factors associated with viral spillover to help scientists identify disease prevention and control strategies.

​Previous investments by USAID/PREDICT in Thailand have provided the training, testing protocols and technology to identify known and novel viruses, including MERS-CoV and Nipah, that the Thai laboratory is now using to test the soccer team for viral infections.

Equipment used to conduct testing of collected samples. / Richard Nyberg, USAID

This same testing methodology has been used is supporting the Thailand Government’s efforts to identify any new emerging public health threats. Past examples include work with the WHO Collaborating Centre for Research and Training on Viral Zoonoses at Chulalongkorn University, which provided critical viral detection support during multiple events of public health concern, including confirming cases of MERS Coronavirus, supporting Zika virus surveillance and investigating a suspected Ebola case.

Curious about other USAID/PREDICT collaboration in helping response to events of public health concern? Read more in their annual reports and publications.

As for the soccer players and their coach, they are slowly getting back to normal lives, smiling, healthy and giving thanks to their rescuers.

About the Author

Amalhin Shek is a Budget and Communications Analyst in the Office of Infectious Disease, Emerging Threats Division, part of USAID’s Bureau for Global Health.