A training exercise saw 500 health providers practice emergency air transport to test their ability to handle a portable bio-containment unit — a device used to isolate and transport patients with highly contagious diseases
Doctors are training for the threat of an outbreak of deadly infectious disease at this summer’s World Cup.
Medics have been preparing themselves for a number of infectious dangers, including Ebola, cholera, SARS, tuberculosis, measles, varicella, hepatitis A, typhoid, malaria, RSV and hantavirus being spread by more than seven million football fans flying in for the 48-team tournament.
They are also readying themselves for the possibility of mass-casualty events, such as shootings. Dr. Vikramjit Mukherjee, chief of critical care at Bellevue Hospital in New York, said: “The whole health care system in New York City will be on the alert for ALL of these events.
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“We’re looking at it like a huge migration event. Because of what we’ve seen in the last few years — Ebola, Covid, and mpox — we feel that we will be the ones who will be affected first for the next outbreak, and therefore have an additional responsibility of keeping prepared.”
A training exercise saw 500 health providers from New York and New Jersey come together for four days to practice emergency air transport with a group of pretend patients suffering from infectious diseases from Toronto, a World Cup host city, to LaGuardia Airport in Queens.
The “patients” were then taken to Bellevue Hospital for treatment in a bid to test workers’ ability to handle a portable bio-containment unit — a device used to isolate and transport patients with highly contagious diseases. Bellevue spokesperson Noel Alicea said: “That was the biggest drill we’ve done, because that involved local, state, federal, and international partners.”
Hackensack Meridian Health in New Jersey is the closest Level 1 trauma center to MetLife Stadium, which will host eight matches, including England’s third group match against Panama on June 27 and the World Cup Final on July 19.
The tournament is being jointly held in the US, Canada and Mexico and starts on June 10. England will be based in Kansas City and will play their other two group games in Dallas and Boston.
Dr. Gregory Sugalski, an Army veteran and chair of the hospital’s emergency medicine, told The New York Post: “We understand the concerns sports fans might have when it comes to attending an event with so many others, from the US and from other countries. “But I want to say two words to them: ‘No fear’.
“Our staff at Hackensack Meridian has been training and drilling for two years for this event. We’ve been on the frontline of care for major NFL games for the Giants and Jets, alongside high-profile concerts for celebrities like Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran and Bruce Springsteen, and major entertainment events like Wrestlemania.”
Staff at other medical facilities across New Jersey — including St. Michael’s Medical Center, Cooper University Hospital and Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital — have also undergone extensive training and the White House created a FIFA task force, led by Andrew Giuliani, the son of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Reporting to the Department of Homeland Security, Andrew Giuliani is “spearheading the federal government’s extensive efforts to ensure that the largest World Cup in history will also be the safest,” according to the task force’s website.
But Dr Mukherjee, of Bellevue Hospital, added: “Our priority — our laser focus — is toward making sure our health care workers are safe as they go into relatively dangerous zones of high-consequence, infectious diseases . . . that’s what we teach and train every day at the front lines.”
