Brasilia: Director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Dr Tom Frieden said on Thursday that the widespread Zika virus outbreak in Brazil does not pose enough of a threat to warrant canceling or putting off the Olympic Games set to be held in Rio de Janeiro in August.
He said during a luncheon at The National Press Club in Washington, “There is no public health reason to cancel or delay the Olympics”. A Canadian professor published controversial paper earlier this month in the Harvard Public Health Review that called for the Games to be cancelled or delayed because it said they would likely speed up the spread of Zika throughout the world. Several health experts have disputed the report as lacking evidence for such a move.
Frieden said, “The risk to delegations going and athletes is not zero, but the risk of any travel isn’t zero. The risk is not particularly high other than for pregnant women”. Zika infection in pregnant women has been shown to be a cause of the birth defect microcephaly and other serious brain abnormalities in babies. The World Health Organization (WHO) has also said there is strong scientific consensus that Zika can also cause another rare neurological syndrome Guillain-Barre that causes temporary paralysis in adults.
The connection between Zika and microcephaly first came to light last fall in Brazil, which has confirmed more than 1,400 cases of microcephaly that it considers to be related to Zika infections in the mothers. Putting the Olympics risk in perspective, Frieden said that travel to the Summer Games would represent less than one quarter of one percent of all travel to Zika affected areas.
He called on the Congress to deliver funding needed to fight Zika globally and to protect pregnant women in the United States and its territories, such as Puerto Rico, which is considered by the officials as be one of the sensitive areas for the outbreak of Zika cases. He thanked German drugmaker Bayer AG for promising a “substantial” donation to help fight Zika in Puerto Rico.
The virus is spread by mosquitoes. Frieden said that with local US mosquito season about to begin there was a narrow window of opportunity to mount an effective Zika prevention battle. “That window is closing,” he added. The US Senate had voted to allocate $1.1 billion out of the $1.9 billion that the Obama Administration requested in emergency Zika funding, while the House of Representatives had promised only about $622 million, much of which would come from resources earmarked for other health crises.
He said that he hoped the Congress “will do the right thing” and provide adequate funding to tackle Zika, as well as pay back what the agency had already borrowed from other sources, such as money set aside to fight Ebola in 2017 and 2018. “We need it back to keep Ebola from roaring back,” he added. Health officials said last week that there are already 279 pregnant women in the United States and its territories who have tested positive for Zika. “We need a robust response to protect American women and reduce the number of families affected (by Zika),” Frieden said, “Anything we don’t do now, we will regret later.”