{"id":24403,"date":"2016-02-03T09:04:11","date_gmt":"2016-02-03T17:04:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/zika-virus-overshadows-buildup-to-rio-games\/"},"modified":"2016-02-03T09:04:11","modified_gmt":"2016-02-03T17:04:11","slug":"zika-virus-overshadows-buildup-to-rio-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/zika-virus-overshadows-buildup-to-rio-games\/","title":{"rendered":"Zika virus overshadows buildup to Rio games"},"content":{"rendered":"

RIO DE JANEIRO<\/strong> \u2014 The Zika virus is overshadowing the final preparations for the Rio de Janeiro Olympics, even eclipsing concerns over deep budget cuts and severe water pollution.<\/p>\n

Hundreds of reporters packed Olympic headquarters on Tuesday to hear about ticket sales, venue construction and a reminder that Friday marks six months until the opening of the games on Aug. 5.<\/p>\n

Instead, they got the organizers\u2019 medical director, Dr. Joao Grangeiro, and government health officials offering assurances that the games will be safe from Zika and that only pregnant women are at risk from the mosquito-borne virus with its epicenter in Brazil.<\/p>\n

\u201cAthletes should come to the Olympic Games,\u201d said Grangeiro, who said organizers are following guidelines of the World Health Organization, which calls the spread of the virus an \u201cextraordinary event and public health threat.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey (athletes) are not at risk,\u201d Grangeiro added, promising the mosquito count will fall in August during Brazil\u2019s winter.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will have Summer Games, but for us it\u2019s winter time,\u201d he said. \u201cWe will not have an epidemic or pandemic situation. We can\u2019t say we won\u2019t have any cases (during the games) but we see this as a minimal risk.\u201d<\/p>\n

Daniel Soranz, Rio\u2019s city health secretary, told reporters the mosquitoes around the Olympic Park, the heart of the games, were not primarily the Aedes aegypt type that transmit Zika.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have routine daily actions in the area in order to diminish the number of mosquitoes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Jaques Wagner, the chief of staff for Brazil president Dilma Rousseff, said Monday there was no risk to athletes unless \u201cthey are pregnant women.\u201d He said pregnant women were \u201cnot recommended\u201d to travel to Brazil.<\/p>\n

The Zika virus is another problem for Rio organizers, who have been forced to cut about $500 million to keep the $2 billion operating budget in balance with Brazil going through its deepest recession since the 1930s.<\/p>\n

The local currency has lost about 30 percent of its value against the dollar in the last year, inflation is above 10 percent and Rousseff is fighting impeachment.<\/p>\n

Rio organizing committee spokesman Mario Andrada was asked how organizers can fund programs to kill mosquitoes as they slash other expenditures.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this case the most important thing to do is obviously to care for those who have been infected and to prevent new infections, and not to worry if we have budget or not,\u201d Andrada said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have the funds that we need to do the work that we have to do,\u201d Andrada added, without specifying the cost.<\/p>\n

He was also asked if tourists were getting worried about traveling to Brazil.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo. I don\u2019t have even one request to return tickets,\u201d he replied.<\/p>\n

Christophe Dubi, the IOC\u2019s executive director of the Olympic Games, said sports federations were briefed about Zika on Tuesday at the IOC offices in Lausanne, Switzerland.<\/p>\n

He said the Olympics had dealt with the SARS virus before the 2008 Beijing Games, and Ebola during the 2014 Summer Youth Games in Nanjing, China.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not unusual, not comfortable obviously, but at the same time there\u2019s a very good response from the Brazilian authorities,\u201d he said, \u201cespecially with the huge mobilization of armed forces.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP Sports Writer Graham Dunbar in Lausanne, Switzerland, and SNTV producer Filipe de Almeida in Rio contributed to this report.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Stephen Wade on Twitter: http:\/\/twitter.com\/StephenWadeAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RIO DE JANEIRO \u2014 The Zika virus is overshadowing the final preparations for the Rio de Janeiro Olympics, even eclipsing concerns over deep budget cuts and severe water pollution. Hundreds of reporters packed Olympic headquarters on Tuesday to hear about ticket sales, venue construction and a reminder that Friday marks six months until the opening […]<\/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-24403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24403","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=24403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24403\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24403"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=24403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}