Health sleuths are watching for disease threats during the World Cup
[June 11, 2026]
By LAURAN NEERGAARD
WASHINGTON (AP) — While millions of soccer fans cheer or groan over
World Cup matches spanning North America, health officials will be on
high alert for germs.
A heat wave may be the most obvious health threat. But infectious
diseases can spread in a crowd, and experts are set to scrutinize
wastewater, hospital visits, even social media for any signs that an
outbreak might be brewing.
Measles, one of the most contagious diseases, is among the top concerns,
sparking a warning this week from the Pan American Health Organization,
PAHO. With a nearly six-week stretch of packed stadiums, bars and
tourist sites in 16 cities, officials are on the lookout for a long list
of infections, from the stomach bug norovirus to mosquito-borne dengue
fever.
“This is truly a marathon,” said Palak Raval-Nelson, Philadelphia's
health commissioner.
The mass gatherings come at a tense moment for budget-strapped health
agencies in the U.S. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, hit
hard by Trump administration staffing cuts, already was grappling with a
growing Ebola outbreak in central Africa and a cruise ship hantavirus
outbreak. While CDC officials have advised state and local health
departments behind the scenes, its expected World Cup disease
surveillance dashboard still was “in final development” days before
games began, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
“Our public health professionals are pretty stretched,” said global
health specialist Rebecca Katz of Georgetown University, who is leading
an unusual new hub to help.
At the Health Security Operations Center, a joint effort between
Georgetown and MedStar Health, workers are analyzing data from around
the country so they can alert health authorities, even emergency rooms,
to any early signs of trouble. The center is issuing daily “situation
reports” about disease trends around World Cup host cities and team base
camps to several hundred local and federal public health groups,
emergency management and hospital officials and others who’ve signed up.
“It's important that we don't become alarmist,” said MedStar emergency
medicine specialist Dr. Shane Kappler. “We're trying to be the insurance
policy.”
Measles is a top concern for potential World Cup spread
Already more than 2,000 people in the U.S. have come down with measles
this year, nearly as many as during all of last year, according to the
CDC. Patients can spread measles before the rash appears and they
realize they're sick. Not too long ago, the U.S. seldom saw measles
except from international travel by unvaccinated people.
Now with frequent U.S. outbreaks, "actually a lot of our international
partners are worried about measles being exported to them after the
games,” said Georgetown’s Katz.
Measles is spreading in Canada, too, and has exceeded 11,000 cases in
Mexico, according to PAHO. It’s urging soccer fans to be sure they’re
vaccinated, with a health campaign saying a single measles patient can
spread the virus to up to 18 unprotected people.
Is Ebola a concern at the World Cup?
Brown University’s Dr. Craig Spencer, who survived Ebola while working
in the West Africa outbreak over a decade ago, said he’s repeatedly
asked about the risk of Ebola during the World Cup — but “for me, Ebola
is not the No. 1 or No. 2 or even No. 3 threat.”
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Georgetown University's Rebecca Katz points to measles data for the
country at Georgetown's Health Security Operations Center in
Washington on June 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Shelby Lum)
“I am concerned about importation of measles, I am much more concerned
about the importation of other infectious threats that may not seem as
scary to us as Ebola,” Spencer said.
Many health experts agree that the risk of Ebola spreading in the U.S.
is very low. That’s partly because of government travel screenings and
restrictions on people recently in outbreak-affected areas. Moreover,
Ebola spreads by contact with bodily fluids from someone showing
symptoms, not through the air like measles or respiratory viruses.
“One fortunate thing about this virus is you’re most contagious when
you’re really quite ill. It’s not like COVID, where you could be sitting
next to someone who doesn’t even know they’re infected and perhaps
contract the virus,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of Brown’s Pandemic
Center.
How to spot brewing diseases
There’s precedent for germs invading major sporting events. Canadian
scientists linked a community measles outbreak to the 2010 Olympics in
Vancouver, and clusters of norovirus had to be contained during the
Olympics this year in Milan and in 2018 in South Korea.
One way to detect signs of trouble: People with certain viral or
bacterial infections shed genetic material that sophisticated testing of
wastewater can spot. For example, measles can appear in wastewater days
before an emergency room sees its first patients.
This week's surveillance reports from Katz's center note that wastewater
testing recently found diarrhea-causing rotavirus, hepatitis A and
norovirus in some parts of the U.S., something to watch as soccer crowds
arrive.
In Dallas, officials ramped up wastewater screening including at the
international airport, casting a wide net rather than looking for
specific illnesses, said Dr. Phil Huang, director of Dallas County
Health and Human Services.
His team also is enhancing the usual mosquito testing, checking not just
for West Nile virus that regularly spreads in the U.S. but for viruses
more common in other countries like dengue and chikungunya.
Public health officials have been preparing for months, said
Philadelphia’s Raval-Nelson, including with mock emergency drills and
communications with counterparts around the country.
“I don’t want to send a message that there’s one key thing," she said.
“We have the frameworks in place to carry out what we need to.”
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