Report: Canadian Olympic Committee issues warning on travel to Rio

Every Olympics has its share of pre-Games anxieties, but even by usual standards this Rio 2016 checklist is getting pretty lengthy.

Brazil’s economy and politics have the staggers. The water quality literally stinks. Now the World Health Organization has warned the Zika virus is “spreading explosively” in the Americas, and called an emergency meeting in Geneva Feb. 1.

The International Olympic Committee on Thursday said it would issue guidelines to NOCs, but it appears that the Canadian Olympic Committee is way ahead of them. TSN’s Rick Westhead reports that the COC’s chief medical officer Robert McCormack has drafted a memo for sports federations noting that at least for now, pregnant women should not travel to Rio for pre-Games visits. Dr. McCormack told Westhead:

“Right now, it’s as bad as it’s going to be. It’s their mosquito time of year. There’s the issue with Zika, and also an issue with the dengue virus and even malaria in some of the cities like Manaus, Belo Horizonte and Brasilia where [soccer] will be played.”

Denise Dignard, women's high-performance director with Canada Basketball, was in Rio earlier this month for a site inspection of the Games' new basketball venue. It’s perhaps a measure of how quickly this issue has raised alarming levels that her group was not given any medical briefings. Dignard said the only brush up against it came when a young volunteer in a grocery store told her that stocks of mosquito repellant were running low due to the Zika virus, primarily transmitted via Aedes aegypti mosquito bite. The virus has no cure, and has been associated with "birth malformations and neurological syndromes."

“We’re basically relying on the COC to provide us with direction,” Dignalt said, noting that Last month the COC advised sports federations about the need for immunization for malaria and dengue fever ahead of the Games.