Olympics unlikely to spread Zika, WHO says

Everything being done to mitigate risk during Rio Games, experts say

The World Health Organization said on Tuesday that Zika is still a global public health emergency, but unlikely to spread further as a result of the upcoming Rio Olympics, which are expected to attract 500,000 visitors to Brazil.

These assessments were made by the WHO’s emergency committee on Zika, which met on Tuesday for the third time since the UN health agency first declared a “public health emergency of international concern.”

Although the group of experts agreed that mass gatherings can put individuals at risk of contracting Zika, they concluded that “there’s a very low risk of further international spread of Zika virus as a result of the Olympics and Paralympics.”

“Mass gatherings can pose a risk to individuals. They can amplify the disease, they can lead to international spread,” said Dr. Bruce Aylward, the WHO’s executive director of outbreaks and health emergencies. “But the Olympics won’t. . . . Everything is being done to minimize what is already a low risk.”

The past two months have seen a growing chorus of academics calling on the WHO and International Olympic Committee (IOC) to move, postpone or cancel the Olympics and Paralympics, which will take place in Rio de Janeiro in August.

Zika first emerged in Brazil in 2015 and is circulating in 60 countries and territories, some of which have seen an alarming surge in birth defects and neurological disorders.

These include microcephaly, a congenital defect associated with abnor- mally small heads and developmental delays, and Guillain-Barré syndrome, a neurological disorder that can cause temporary paralysis or even death.

Under the International Health Regulations, a WHO emergency committee must meet every three months until the emergency is declared over. Typical matters of discussion include whether the health crisis should still be considered an emergency and the need for specific recommendations or travel restrictions.

But this latest meeting also addressed the growing controversy over whether the Olympics and Paralympics should proceed. In May, University of Ottawa law professor Amir Attaran wrote in the Harvard Public Health Review that the Rio Olympics should be moved or postponed, while blasting the WHO and IOC for being in “deep denial.”

On Tuesday, Aylward said that 20 per cent of the world’s population is living in an area affected by Zika and nearly 30 per cent of international travellers are already moving in and out of Zika hot spots. “If you look at the proportion of that travel that will be affected by the Olympics, (it’s) very, very, very marginal.”