Photo credit: Canada’s National Observer
As people from around the world arrive in Toronto and festivities marking the beginning of the FIFA World Cup get underway, healthcare workers want to assure visitors and residents that there are key measures in place to help keep them safe.
Toronto Today reports that they have spent months preparing for possible threats, from mass-casualty events to outbreaks of viral illnesses such as measles and norovirus.
Toronto Public Health workers are used to working behind the scenes at major sports events and festivals in the city -but the main difference with the World Cup is the length- more than two weeks – and the many countries people are coming from, said Dr Michelle Murti, the city’s medical officer of health.
“We really are inviting the world. There was a lot of replanning and planning depending on which countries we would be hosting,” she said.
Public health officials have been conducting global surveillance to identify which infectious diseases are common among travellers from their countries of origin, such as measles or meningitis.
The federal government has imposed temporary travel restrictions on visitors from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and South Sudan amid an Ebola outbreak.
Local public health authorities weren’t involved in that decision. They won’t comment on it, Murti said, but noted that the risk of Ebola is low and something like a norovirus outbreak is much more likely.
Norovirus, which spreads through both person-to-person contact or by eating contaminated food, causes nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.
There’s already an “uptick” of norovirus in different parts of North America, including Toronto, Murti said, so public health officials are keeping an eye on it through increased wastewater testing near the soccer stadium, training sites and in the FIFA Fan Festival area.
Wastewater surveillance will alert staff to step up public health messages about handwashing and staying home if you’re sick, as well as ensuring there are enough handwashing or hand sanitizer stations in FIFA activity areas.
Murti said they are also using wastewater to check for early signals of measles and mpox.
Because measles is one of the most infectious viruses in the world, and symptoms may not develop for days after exposure, public health would warn people that the virus was present in a certain area and urge them to check their vaccination status if they were there. Staff would also mobilize to set up vaccine clinics if needed.
But the most important thing both Canadians and international fans should do is ensure they’re fully vaccinated against measles in advance, she said.
“If you’re heading to a game, if you haven’t checked your vaccine status, please do get boosted if you haven’t had, you know, your two doses.”
Murti noted that, fortunately, Toronto has “generally pretty high levels of vaccine coverage.”
