Tracking the public health effects of the Rio Olympics

 11-Aug-16, Vector

The 2016 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games began in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, with more than 11,000 athletes and 500,000 international fans expected. The Olympic Games are always vulnerable to disease outbreaks. All eyes in public health are on the concurrently occurring Zika virus and the under-reported H1N1 influenza outbreak in Brazil.

To track ongoing and emerging outbreaks that may result from the Rio Olympics, HealthMap has created a surveillance map (http://healthmap.org/Olympics).

Image: Vector

The pink areas denote countries sending the most athletes to Brazil. The green dots represent areas expected to receive post-Olympic travellers from major airports in Brazil.

According to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), visitors to the 2016 Games are most at risk for gastrointestinal illness from waterborne pathogens and mosquito-borne infections, including dengue, chikungunya and Zika virus.

So far in 2016, we have seen an estimated 165,000 cases of Zika virus, 1,345,286 cases of dengue, 137,808 cases of chikungunya and more than 6,500 cases of H1N1 influenza, with an additional 1,233 deaths from H1N1 - all in Brazil alone.

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