What is the experience from previous mass gathering events? Lessons for ă Zika virus and the Olympics 2016
Abstract
All previous experiences from different mass gathering show that vaccine ă preventable diseases is the most important infections like influenza, ă hepatitis A, polio and meningitis. Three mass gathering held in Africa ă during the Ebola outbreak accepted participants from West Africa and was ă able to handle the theoretical risk without any incident. Therefore we ă believe that the Olympic games in Rio de Janeiro should not be ă cancelled. The number of visitors to the games is a tiny fraction (1%) ă of other visitors to Zika endemic countries and it will have no ă measurable effect on the risk of spreading Zika virus, if the games was ă cancelled. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of ă International Society for Infectious Diseases.