{"id":12002,"date":"2016-02-21T09:04:12","date_gmt":"2016-02-21T17:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/un-zika-virus-will-be-way-down-before-games\/"},"modified":"2016-02-21T09:04:12","modified_gmt":"2016-02-21T17:04:12","slug":"un-zika-virus-will-be-way-down-before-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/un-zika-virus-will-be-way-down-before-games\/","title":{"rendered":"UN: Zika virus will be ‘way down’ before Games"},"content":{"rendered":"

GENEVA<\/strong> \u2014 The head of the World Health Organization\u2019s Zika response team is predicting that Brazil will host a \u201cfantastic Olympics\u201d and that the mosquito-borne virus will be \u201cway down\u201d by the time the Summer Games begin in Rio de Janeiro on Aug. 5.<\/p>\n

Dr. Bruce Aylward, WHO\u2019s executive director for outbreaks and health emergencies, said Friday at a news conference that the mosquito population is expected to drop off around when Rio hosts the games, since it will be winter in the southern hemisphere.<\/p>\n

Rio\u2019s Olympic venues are also in a relatively confined area, he noted, making it easier for authorities to control the local mosquito population.<\/p>\n

\u201cBrazil is going to have a fantastic Olympics, and it\u2019s going to be a successful Olympics, and the world is going to go there,\u201d Aylward said. \u201cI just wish I was going there, but there\u2019s not going to be a lot of problems there by then, so I\u2019ll be somewhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aylward also pointed to the \u201cprobability\u201d that the Zika virus will have \u201cgone through\u201d a large slice of the country\u2019s population by then, so many Brazilians might have developed an immunity to the disease by the time of the Aug.5-21 games.<\/p>\n

Zika, however, is just the latest cloud hanging over Brazil ahead of South America\u2019s first Olympics. The country is coping with its worst recession in 100 years, impeachment proceedings against President Dilma Rousseff and a wide-ranging corruption scandal centered on the state-controlled oil-and-gas giant Petrobras.<\/p>\n

Brazil has recorded more than 1 million suspected Zika infections in recent months amid strong concerns that the virus could be linked to a spike in the number of babies born with abnormally small heads \u2014 microcephaly \u2014 and to a rare neurological syndrome that can cause temporary paralysis in people of all ages.<\/p>\n

In Brazil on Friday, ministers, state governors, health authorities and members of the armed forces visited schools throughout the country to involve students in the nationwide campaign to eradicate the Aedes aegypti mosquito that spreads the Zika virus.<\/p>\n

WHO has declared a global health emergency due to the virus, saying it could produce as many as 4 million cases in the next year. The mosquitoes that spread Zika \u2014 which also spread dengue and yellow fever \u2014 are entrenched across the region and in a wide belt around the globe, mostly in tropical areas.<\/p>\n

Zika has spread to 36 countries, mostly in Latin America, and Aylward pointed to the \u201cthe explosive spread we\u2019ve seen over the last 24 months.\u201d He said the \u201coverall goal\u201d was to reduce the mosquito population.<\/p>\n

There is no licensed treatment or vaccine for Zika. WHO and U.S. health authorities have recommended that pregnant women postpone traveling to infected areas and their partners use condoms or abstain from sex if they live in or have visited Zika-affected areas.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP Sports Writer Stephen Wilson in London contributed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

GENEVA \u2014 The head of the World Health<\/a> Organization\u2019s Zika response team is predicting that Brazil will host a \u201cfantastic Olympics\u201d and that the mosquito-borne virus will be \u201cway down\u201d by the time the Summer Games begin in Rio de Janeiro on Aug. 5. Dr. Bruce Aylward, WHO\u2019s executive director for outbreaks and health emergencies, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-12002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12002\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12002"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=12002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}