Researchers See Very Low Risk of Zika Virus in August and Criticize Idea of Putting Olympic Games Off
Three health researchers sent a letter to the British magazine "The Lancet", one of the world's top medical publications, contesting a letter signed by 150 scientists and addressed to the WHO (World Health Organization) requesting that the Olympic Games in Rio be put off due to the risk of contracting the Zika virus.
The letter released last week, increased the controversy surrounding the threat of illness for the athletes who will be coming to Rio for the Games. In the run-up to the publication, Pau Gasol, a Spanish basketball player from the Chicago Bulls, said that he, for example, was considering not taking part in the Olympics.
"If you aren't pregnant and decide to skip the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro due to fear of contracting Zika, you can find a better reason; there are many others", said researchers Eduardo Massad, Francisco Coutinho - both from the Medical College at USP (São Paulo University) -, and Annelies Wilder-Smith, from the Lee Kong School of Medicine in Singapore, according to information sent by Fapesp's (Foundation for Research Support of the state of São Paulo) Agency.
Massad is a member of the Zika Virus Research Network in São Paulo (Zika Network), supported by Fapesp.
According to the agency, in the text which has yet to be evaluated by the magazine, specialists in mathematical modeling and epidemiology compare the risk of Zika virus infection during the Olympics in August, with the risk of contracting Dengue fever which is considered low during the Brazilian winter season.
"We calculate that the individual risk of infection of the Dengue virus during the Olympics to be 0,0005 [5 cases per 10 thousand people]. The individual risk of contracting Zika is 0,00003 [around 3 cases per 100 thousand visitors]. If we are expecting around 500 thousand tourists, we will have approximately 15 people infected, with 10 of those being asymptomatic and 5 showing symptoms", affirmed the researcher to the Fapesp Agency.
According to Massad, the calculation is based upon the estimated total number of cases of Zika in Brazil in 2015, between 500 thousand and 1,5 million.
Researcher Débora Diniz, professor at UnB (University of Brasilia), one of the 150 signatories of the letter sent to the WHO disagrees.
"We don't even know the rate of Zika contraction in the population, for example. Since the notification of cases of infection only became mandatory in Brazil in January of 2016, we know very little about the history of the illness, which is crucial for tracing estimates of future risk", she said.
The Health Minister, Ricardo Barros, went back to rebutting the letter by the 150 scientists recommending that the Olympics be put off or transferred due to the outbreak of the Zika virus again on Thursday, the 2nd. For the minister, the recommendation is "exaggerated".
"I think it's an exaggeration, an excess of caution. Zika is in 60 countries that encompass 1,3 billion people. It isn't the Olympics that are going to increase or decrease the spread of the virus", said Barros.
In the letter sent to the WHO, the scientists said that recent discoveries regarding Zika make it "unethical" to maintain the Games in Rio. Among the signatories are Philip Rubin, scientific consultant to the White House, and doctors and specialists in medical ethics from Oxford University in England, and Harvard and Yale in the United States.
Translated by LLOYD HARDER