In Athens, they braced for the big one – a possible terrorist attack. But this fall, Olympic organizers are looking out for the little one – a microscopic bug called H5N1.
Better known as “bird flu,” the virus has spread from South Korea to eastern Europe and now to London, killing more than 60 people in Asia and raising concern about a pandemic.
Sixteen weeks before the Turin Winter Games, U.S. Olympic Committee officials are tracking bird flu as they would a terrorist threat. They are tapping world health officials for fresh updates, urging athletes to scrub their hands and teaching coaches about the flu’s nasty symptoms. When Apolo Anton Ohno and fellow U.S. speed skaters competed in South Korea three weeks ago, the USOC warned them to avoid animal-laden public markets.
“It’s just like security. It’s another element you have to keep your eye on,” said Steve Roush, the USOC’s chief of sport performance. “We’re monitoring it, making sure it isn’t a factor. If it should be, we’ll put in some contingency plans to protect the delegation.”
The scouting report is still medically muddy. Bird flu has met two of the three benchmarks for a global outbreak – it is a new, highly lethal strain and it has gained the ability to infect humans. Human-to-human transmission – the third criterion – apparently has not happened. So far, the only people to get sick are those who have handled some of the millions of Asian birds that carry the virus.
But according to disease coordinators at the United Nations and the World Health Organization, the virus has a better chance to morph into a bigger killer each time it flies – usually via wild fowl – to a new country.
“What brings it to the headlines is it’s new and unknown. And far greater epidemiological minds than those at the USOC say it seems to be a virus that is mutating,” said Ed Ryan, the USOC’s director of sports medicine.
“The big question is: What happens when it goes human-to-human? It can become a much more virulent disease.”
The virus has not been detected in birds in Italy, and nobody in Europe has come down with the strain.
The USOC has not made any backup plans to reroute the athletes’ travel, change their housing arrangements or limit their time in Turin’s Olympic Village should bird flu become contagious, Roush said. But other protections are in place.
“We always have our contingency plan for quarantining athletes for – I hate to say – the garden variety of influenza. With our near-venue housing, we have the ability to get them out of the mainstream of our delegation to help slow down” the spread, Roush said.
Two small flu outbreaks have touched recent Olympiads. At Nagano, in 1998, illness caused at least five athletes to withdraw, including U.S. cross country skier Nina Kemppel.
Before the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney, a New Jersey prescription drug company donated doses of the anti-flu drug Tamiflu to the U.S. delegation. At the time, Australia was beset with a flu strain. And at the Salt Lake Games in 2002, Team USA was hit with “a handful” of flu cases, Ryan said.
“We made sure we had appropriate treatment measures to deal with it,” Ryan said. “Subsequently, we had no competition time lost.”
Bill Briggs can be reached at 303-820-1720 or bbriggs@denverpost.com.
