COVID-19 "Olympic Variant" Is a Real Concern Reports Physician's Weekly

In an interview with Physician's Weekly, Annie Sparrow, MD, Special Advisor to the Director-General, World Health Organization, implores the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to heed lessons of the past and warning signs for the future

News provided by

Physician's Weekly

Jul 21, 2021, 08:20 ET

BASKING RIDGE, N.J., July 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- This week, the world's greatest athletes will gather together in Tokyo for the Olympics – and, unfortunately, so will COVID variants. Physician's Weekly, a trusted source of medical news, voices the growing concern from the medical community of a post-Olympic spike in COVID cases in an interview with Annie Sparrow, MD, Assistant Professor, Population Health Science & Policy, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, just released on the Physician's Weekly Podcast.

One of many concerns discussed with Dr. Sparrow, is the pre-COVID ventilation in sports venues and tight living quarters in Olympic Village. "People from every single country in the world, except North Korea, are congregating in the same place, which is an extraordinary opportunity for the variants to mix, perhaps mutate, and have new viral progeny," says Dr. Sparrow in her interview with Physician's Weekly. "And then we have all of the athletes going home to many countries that are unvaccinated and unprotected. This is the equivalent of passive biological warfare of sorts. This is how you would spread something incredibly effectively over every corner of the earth."

Dr. Sparrow also cautions that the Paralympics, which shortly follow the Olympics, will face heightened risk for infection as some athletes may be less mobile and/or have a diverse range of immunocompetence.

Listen to the entire interview with Dr. Sparrow at www.physiciansweekly.com/olympics-2021.

About Physician's Weekly (www.physiciansweekly.com)
For nearly 40 years, Physician's Weekly LLC, has been a trusted source of medical news and education for healthcare professionals. The company's unique wallboard publication—the cornerstone of its success—is located in over 30,000 top, medical institutions and group practices across the U.S. Physician's Weekly offers in-depth interviews with respected experts in the industry who weigh in on landmark research and trending topics affecting the medical community, medical conference and meeting coverage, as well as accredited Continuing Medical Education (CME) activities.

SOURCE Physician's Weekly