Allen County’s health commissioner isn’t ready to say let’s call off the Olympics, but she says it needs to be strongly considered.
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Zika-related symptoms are usually mild, but pregnant women who contract the illness are at a higher risk of having a child with an abnormality that causes the baby’s head to be much smaller.
Opening ceremonies for the Olympics are set for August 5 in Rio de Janeiro and the games are slated to run through August 21. There are many questions surrounding the suitability of Rio de Janeiro as the host city and with the President of the country being impeached on corruption charges betting on whether the games will go on at all may be the wager of the year. Which leads to a bitter truth: “the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games must be postponed, moved, or both, as a precautionary concession”, University of Ottawa professor Amir Attaran wrote in the Harvard Public Health Review. Or in other words: “according to the Brazil’s official data, Rio is not on the fringes of the outbreak, but inside its heart”.
A Canadian public health expert wants to delay or move the 2016 Olympics in Brazil because of the Zika threat. He also signaled a recent move by American baseball leagues that rescheduled and moved games out of Puerto Rico, where cases of the virus have been recorded.
“But for the games, would anyone recommend sending an extra half a million visitors into Brazil right now?”
Since that statement in late January, in which the International Olympic Committee expressed confidence that the Games will be safe and advised participants on how to protect themselves from mosquito bites, researchers have proven that Zika infection during pregnancy can cause microcephaly in newborns.
One way it plans to do this, the IOC said Thursday, is to eliminate collections of standing water near Olympic sites where mosquitos reproduce.
What transpires with this potentially catastrophic issue in the next three months will unquestionably come down to protecting the exorbitant cash investment in the 2016 Olympic Games by the IOC and Brazilian olympic officials versus preventing the certain acceleration of the dissemination of a risky disease across the globe.
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What they haven’t had is a health risk as frightening as the Zika virus. In addition, they should stay in rooms that are air-conditioned and keep windows closed, the agency said. Also, 71 per cent were moderately or very concerned about the health of the Canadian Olympic team during the Games. “With 30 states (in the U.S.) now actually having those types of mosquitoes, I think again those are all reasons to really sit down and make a very thoughtful, deliberate decision”, said Dr. Deborah McMahan.
