With the Zika virus gaining notoriety in the news, many travellers are questioning whether or not they should be cancelling their plans abroad. This has become especially pertinent recently, with many athletes and spectators pulling out of attending the 2016 Rio Olympic Games. However, a recent study out of Yale suggests that the risk of tourists contracting Zika is actually “negligible.”
The report revealed that between three and 37 people out of a possible 500,000 visiting Brazil for the Olympics would be expected to go home with Zika.
“The possibility that travellers returning from the Olympics may spread Zika has become a polemic issue that has led to athletes dropping out of the event, and without evidence, undue stigmatisation of Brazil,” said Prof Albert Ko, chair of the department of epidemiology of microbial diseases at Yale School of Public Health. “This study provides data, which together with initial findings from Brazilian scientists, show that these concerns may be largely exaggerated.”
However, the Yale team noted that rather than Olympic athletes and spectators, it is far more likely that other tourists will be bitten by the Aedes aegypti mosquito and become infected with Zika. This is because they assumed for the paper that the risk of infection for the visitors was the same as for people living in Brazil. However, most tourists will be staying in air-conditioned accommodation where every effort has been made to eradicate mosquito populations.
“If anything, I would say the estimate we have published greatly overestimates the true risk [for spectators],” said the study’s lead author, Joseph Lewnard. “I would expect it to be far lower than the numbers we present.”
Long story short: keep your travel plans, whether they’re to the Olympics or not, if you’re comfortable. Do the best you can to prevent yourself from being bitten by mosquitoes—stay in cool places, wear repellant, and put up bug nets—and your already small risk will decrease significantly.
