{"id":33190,"date":"2026-06-12T07:37:54","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T07:37:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/12\/the-diseases-of-crowds-experts-say-could-be-at-the-world-cup\/"},"modified":"2026-06-12T07:37:54","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T07:37:54","slug":"the-diseases-of-crowds-experts-say-could-be-at-the-world-cup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/12\/the-diseases-of-crowds-experts-say-could-be-at-the-world-cup\/","title":{"rendered":"The \u2018diseases of crowds\u2019 experts say could be at the World Cup"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\u201cDisease surveillance is disease surveillance every day of the week,\u201d Garrow, Philadelphia deputy health commissioner, told CIDRAP News. \u201cWhat is changing in terms of the World Cup is how intense that disease surveillance is going to look.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While Garrow worries about heat-related illnesses and air quality, there\u2019s one infectious disease he\u2019s most concerned about. \u201cMeasles is probably our top worry,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ve already put out communications to our regional healthcare providers about what to look for.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

With <\/span>recent outbreaks<\/span><\/a> in the United States, lower vaccination rates, and people traveling, it seems more likely than ever that a fan with measles could be in the stands at the World Cup. This year, stadiums and Fan Festivals packed with cheering people could make it easy for measles to thrive.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMeasles tends to hang around in the air. It\u2019s very small particles and it just floats there for up to two hours after someone with measles has been in the space,\u201d Garrow said. \u201cHow many people could potentially have gone through that particular site in two hours after the person left?\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Risk of Ebola very low<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
\n\"Soccer
Filippo Venturi \/ Flickr cc.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Even in years without newsworthy infectious disease outbreaks such as\u00a0<\/span>Ebola<\/span><\/a> and Andes hantavirus, public health experts know that infectious diseases flourish in large crowds.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to think of the World Cup as a mass gathering event,\u201d said Amesh Adalja, MD, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be diseases of crowds or what we call crowd diseases that spread.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Infectious diseases that thrive in crowds fall into four categories: respiratory ailments, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), vector-borne infections, and gastrointestinal (GI) illnesses. \u201cWe have to think of the gamut of infections,\u201d Kuppalli said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

With the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo making headlines, many fans wonder what that might mean for them, but doctors don\u2019t anticipate seeing cases during the World Cup.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe entire global health community is watching the Ebola outbreak with deep concern,\u201d Rebecca Katz, PhD, MPH, professor and director of the Center for Global Health Science and Security, said. \u201cWhen we talk about the World Cup, the threat to the general public in North America is really quite low.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Ebola spreads when people come in contact with bodily fluids, which is why it often infects healthcare workers and people involved in burial rituals. \u201cYou could be sitting next to somebody in a stadium, and you\u2019re not going to get Ebola from them,\u201d Katz said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Gonorrhea, chlamydia \u2018will definitely be attending\u2019<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

Experts expect they\u2019ll see more common types of infections, such as COVID-19 or respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). While most Americans aren\u2019t thinking about flu in the summer, it\u2019s infuenza season in the Southern Hemisphere, meaning teams and fans from that part of the world could arrive with it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou can even see outbreaks of flu,\u201d Bernard Camins, MD, professor of infectious diseases at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, said. \u201cTheoretically, [fans] can get on the plane while they\u2019re still not sick and land and be contagious.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

GI infectious diseases such as norovirus often spread during big sporting events, including the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics in Italy and the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in South Korea.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n


\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cDisease surveillance is disease surveillance every day of the week,\u201d Garrow, Philadelphia deputy health commissioner, told CIDRAP News. \u201cWhat is<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33191,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_animmysite_disable_animation":false,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.cidrap.umn.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/layout_large\/public\/article\/Soccer%20fans.jpg?h=3146ff43&itok=_Wxf0hpe","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[214],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-usa-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33190\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}