{"id":36564,"date":"2026-06-09T09:47:06","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T07:47:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/?post_type=news&#038;p=36564"},"modified":"2026-06-09T09:47:06","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T07:47:06","slug":"health-experts-to-screen-us-wastewater-for-disease-outbreaks-during-world-cup","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/health-experts-to-screen-us-wastewater-for-disease-outbreaks-during-world-cup\/","title":{"rendered":"Health experts to screen US wastewater for disease outbreaks during World Cup"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Epidemiologists will be busy this summer sifting through sewage and social media with the goal of keeping soccer fans and the public safe from severe illness during the World Cup, one of the largest and most globally diverse mass gatherings ever anticipated.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\"><\/div>\n<div>A public health squad based in Washington, District of Columbia, plans to monitor wastewater and internet chatter to detect and track infectious diseases should they emerge in any of the United States (US) or Canadian cities hosting World Cup players, their matches, and millions of spectators, organisers said.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\"><\/div>\n<div>The 39-day event kicks off in Mexico on Thursday. More than 6.5 million soccer fans are expected to travel from over 100 countries to witness 104 games in the US, Canada and Mexico.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\"><\/div>\n<div>The scale of the event and the globe-spanning travel involved pose a heightened risk of rapid disease transmission at a time when strained US public health resources are coping at home and abroad with outbreaks of measles, Ebola and hantavirus, health security experts say.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\"><\/div>\n<div>Budget and staffing cuts under the Trump administration, along with the US withdrawal from the World Health Organisation (WHO), have exacerbated those challenges, according to organisers of the new disease-tracking initiative.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\"><\/div>\n<div>Stepping in to provide real-time data about potential threats, the newly formed team of public health experts has converted a Georgetown University laboratory into an epidemiological command post. The facility brings together academic institutions, non-profit organizations and private companies working in support of government agencies.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\"><\/div>\n<div>The team is already preparing a daily status report to flag emerging risks and any immediate need for action to hospital emergency managers and public health authorities at the local, state, federal and international level, as well as FIFA, soccer&#8217;s governing body and organiser of the World Cup.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\"><\/div>\n<div>The operations center, launched in collaboration with the MedStar Health regional hospital chain, is also a trial run for future events, including the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. MedStar hosts one of the nation&#8217;s 13 biocontainment units.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\"><\/div>\n<div>Advanced wastewater analysis, using deoxyribonucleic acid\u00a0and Ribonucleic Acid\u00a0sequencing to find genetic strands from a range of microbes without requiring laboratory culture, is a key element in monitoring infectious disease threats, said Rebecca Katz, Director of Georgetown&#8217;s Center for Global Health Science and Security and head of the new disease surveillance effort.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\"><\/div>\n<div>&#8220;It&#8217;s incredibly powerful,&#8221; Katz said. Her team is currently receiving such data from collection sites in the US and Canada, as well as from various other health monitoring sources in all three World Cup host countries.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\"><\/div>\n<div>&#8211;Reuters&#8211;<\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":35279,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-36564","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"The team is already preparing a daily status report to flag emerging risks.","published_date":"","news_description":"The team is already preparing a daily status report to flag emerging risks","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/36564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/36564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36565,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/36564\/revisions\/36565"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=36564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}