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 Most likely, only six to 80 people visiting Brazil for the Olympics
would be infected with Zika virus, and between one and 16 would feel
any symptoms, researchers suggest.
The Olympic and Paralympic games, scheduled for August and
September, are expected to bring 350,000 to 500,000 people to
Brazil.
The new results support the recommendation of the World Health
Organization (WHO) that "postponing or relocating the Olympics is
not going to meaningfully impact the international spread of Zika,"
said lead author Joseph Lewnard, of the Yale School of Public Health
in New Haven, Connecticut.
U.S. health officials have concluded that Zika infections in
pregnant women can cause microcephaly, a birth defect marked by
small head size that can lead to severe developmental problems in
babies. The WHO has said there is strong scientific consensus that
Zika can also cause Guillain-Barre, a rare neurological syndrome
that causes temporary paralysis in adults.
The connection between Zika and microcephaly first came to light
last fall in Brazil, which has now confirmed more than 1,600 cases
of microcephaly that it considers to be related to Zika infections
in the mothers
Some academics suggested moving or canceling the games over concerns
that travelers would become infected and bring the disease with them
when they returned home.
"We thought it was important to crunch the numbers and see whether
the threat warranted the calls being made," Lewnard told Reuters
Health.
He and his colleagues estimate that the probability of a person
visiting Rio de Janeiro and getting infected ranges from one in
6,200 to one in 56,300, which translates to a total of six to 80
Zika infections.
Since most people with Zika do not feel any symptoms, they estimate
that between one and 16 people would feel physically ill.
Between three and 37 people would likely take the virus to their
home country, since the average time the virus remains in the body
is about 10 days (although it persists longer in some cases).
"The majority of people will clear shortly after arriving home or
before arriving home," said Lewnard.
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Many visitors will return to countries where it's unlikely the virus
will be spread by mosquitoes. In those countries, the main concern
is sexual transmission of Zika virus, the researchers write.
Lewnard also said these estimates are based on a worst case scenario
that assumes visitors will be as vulnerable to Zika as residents of
Brazil. In reality, he said, visitors will likely stay in hotels
with air conditioning and will take other precautions, such as using
window screens and bug spray.
The risk of spread of Zika from the Olympics is relatively low when
compared to the spread from normal tourism, he added.
The researchers also expect that few pregnant women will travel to
Brazil, due to travel warnings.
In a separate study in the same journal, researchers from Yale and
Brazil's ministry of health suggest that women in future Zika
outbreaks should be told to delay pregnancy for more than six months
at the start of the outbreak to minimize children's exposures to
Zika.
The team, led by Yale's Martial Ndeffo-Mbah, used data from Zika's
spread in Columbia. They found shorter pregnancy delays may increase
the exposure of fetuses to Zika since pregnancies would cluster near
the peak of the outbreak.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2asDmij and http://bit.ly/2asDnTl Annals of
Internal Medicine, online July 25, 2016.
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