UN: Zika virus will be ‘way down’ before Rio hosts Olympics in Aug.

Associated Press

GENEVA

The head of the World Health Organization’s Zika response team is predicting that Brazil will host a “fantastic Olympics” and that the mosquito-borne virus will be “way down” by the time the Summer Games begin in Rio de Janeiro on Aug. 5.

Dr. Bruce Aylward, WHO’s 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.

Rio’s Olympic venues also are in a relatively confined area, he noted, making it easier for authorities to control the local mosquito population.

“Brazil is going to have a fantastic Olympics and it’s going to be a successful Olympics and the world is going to go there,” Aylward said. “I just wish I was going there, but there’s not going to be a lot of problems there by then, so I’ll be somewhere else.”

Aylward also pointed to the “probability” that the Zika virus will have “gone through” a large slice of the country’s population by then, so many Brazilians might have developed an immunity to the disease by the time of the Aug. 5-21 games.

Zika, however, is just the latest cloud hanging over Brazil ahead of South America’s 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.