New York City is bracing for impact as more than a million foreign soccer fans are about to descend on the nation for the upcoming FIFA World Cup — and could bring hundreds of infectious diseases with them.
Medical professionals and infectious disease experts have been preparing for the major event for weeks, knowing that the large numbers of fans in close proximity will create a perfect breeding ground for contagion — and some of those fans could be carrying diseases that are not common in the United States.
A report from The New York Post stated that the medical community was preparing for exposure to everything from the common cold and a resurgence of COVID-19 to Ebola. The list includes, but is not limited to, “viral hemorrhagic fevers, RSV, tuberculosis, measles, varicella, hepatitis A, typhoid, malaria, SARS, hantavirus and even ‘high consequence’ diseases with high mortality rates, like cholera and Ebola.”
Bellevue’s critical care chief Dr. Vikramjit Mukherjee told Healthbeat New York that the city was basically planning for something akin to a mass immigration due to the number of foreign nationals who would be traveling to and through the city.
“The whole health care system in New York City will be on the alert for ALL of these events,” he explained, noting that officials also had to be prepared for intentional disruptions such as shootings or other attacks. “We’re looking at it like a huge migration event.”
“Because of what we’ve seen in the last few years — Ebola, Covid, and mpox — we feel that we will be the ones who will be affected first for the next outbreak, and therefore have an additional responsibility of keeping prepared,” Mukherjee added.
One recent training exercise saw some 500 medical professionals from New York and New Jersey acting out a potential emergency transport — from nearby FIFA host city Toronto to New York City — using a mobile bio-containment unit.
“That was the biggest drill we’ve done, because that involved local, state, federal, and international partners,” Bellevue spokesman Noel Alicea explained.
The White House has also created a FIFA task force — headed by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s son Andrew Giuliani — promising “the federal government’s extensive efforts to ensure that the largest World Cup in history will also be the safest.”
Training and preparation among medical professionals for major events such as the FIFA World Cup often takes months, if not years.
