Health 'War Room,' Digital Tools Are Tracking Disease Risks During World Cup

Key TakeawaysGeorgetown University has launched an independent operations center to monitor public health threats during the World CupAnalysts gather data from wastewater, travel patterns and social media to predict potential disease outbreaks earlyAnother digital tool has been developed at Brown University to track movement of teams and fans.FRIDAY, June 12, 2026 (HealthDay News) — With 48 teams competing across 16 host cities in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, tracking the health and location of World Cup players and fans is a logistical challenge that public health experts want to get a handle on.One such team at Georgetown University has transformed a former microbiology lab into something resembling an intelligence agency war room to track World Cup disease risk.The space is filled with data dashboards, massive television screens displaying live soccer matches and time-zone clocks for cities across North America.It’s called the Health Security Operations Center (HSOC), an independent, non-governmental command hub dedicated to help protect millions of fans and athletes from infectious disease outbreaks during the 2026 FIFA World Cup. The event, which began Thursday, runs through July 19.“What we are doing is standing up a non-governmental public health emergency operations center focused on infectious disease threats,” explained Rebecca Katz. She directs the Center for Global Health Science and Security at Georgetown in Washington, D.C. “We’re doing something that’s never been done before because it’s never been done by a non-governmental entity," Katz said in a university news release.The team will monitor potential threats — including COVID-19, measles, mpox and mosquito-borne illnesses — by pulling in data from diverse sources, such as air travel logs, social media trends, and, perhaps most importantly, municipal wastewater surveillance. Analyzing sewage samples should alert the HSOC to any surge in viral activity up to a week before patients show up at emergency departments.In a related effort, health experts at Brown University have developed a tool that tracks the whereabouts of players and match-goers during the summer tournament, to help supplement local health data. "Any time you get a lot of people coming together for a large celebratory event, such as a sports tournament, you have to worry about public health challenges like infectious disease outbreaks," said William Goedel, associate professor of epidemiology at the university's School of Public Health in Providence, Rhode Island. He spoke in a Brown news release.The Brown digital tool logs team training sites, hotels, match venues and major fan gathering spots. This allows public health departments to visualize where people are congregating and, crucially, where they are heading next in the case of an outbreak.Certain diseases are high on Goedel's team's list for surveillance.“Considering the high density of people from all over the world, we are more focused on COVID-19, measles and norovirus,” he said. “The U.S. has had quite a struggle with measles over the last couple of months. Measles cases have been reported this year in every state that will host a team or match for the World Cup.”One of the Georgetown center’s primary goals is proactive communication in case of outbreaks. If the team detects a health risk in one host city, they immediately notify officials in the next city on the travel itinerary for those fanbases. This allows local hospitals to prepare for specific illnesses before a wave of travelers arrives.“If New York is seeing something, and we know the fan base is traveling from New York to Seattle for the next game, then we’ll connect the data of what we saw in New York to the Seattle jurisdiction so they can prepare,” Katz said.The center also provides country profiles to host cities, detailing diseases prevalent in the home nations of visiting teams. This helps local officials understand specific risks, such as whether a visiting team’s home base has a history of dengue, and whether the local environment in the United States might support the mosquitoes that carry it.The HSOC plans to operate through the end of the tournament in July and hopes to serve as a model for future mass-gathering events, including the 2028 Olympics.More informationVisit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for more information on travel health recommendations.SOURCES: Georgetown University, news release, June 9, 2026; Brown University, news release, June 10, 2026.What This Means For YouPublic health experts at universities are working behind the scenes at the World Cup to monitor data and alert local health systems to potential disease threats..Sign up for our weekly HealthDay newsletter

Health 'War Room,' Digital Tools Are Tracking Disease Risks During World Cup

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