Condoms and wastewater testing: How public health is handling FIFA World Cup

All your favorite CBC podcasts are now available on YouTube. The best in award-winning true crime investigations, hilarious comedies, vibrant pop culture conversations, and even more audio series are all available on CBC Podcast's YouTube channel. You'll also find exclusive video first episodes, YouTube shorts, and behind-the-scenes content from our hosts and producers that

you can't find anywhere else. So if YouTube is your go-to source for podcasts, just search CBC Podcast and hit subscribe and you'll never miss the latest update. This is a CBC podcast. Hey, it's Brian. Are you a soccer fan? My only connection to the game is that I once broke my

forearm when I tripped on a soccer ball while trying to stop it from going out of bounds. It's one reason why I became a physician and why I'm really excited to be speaking with two public health doctors on how they plan on dealing with major health threats during the World Cup. If you like this kind of show, hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode.

Now, here's this week's show. Get it up! Get it up! I'm Dr. Brian Goldman. This is White Coat Black Card. Soccer, a.k.a. football, is the most popular sport in the world.

And the FIFA World Cup is the most watched sporting event on the planet. Vancouver and Toronto have rolled out the red carpet. Get it up! Get it up! Our show this week is about a quieter form of drumming the behind-the-scenes efforts by doctors in both cities to keep us safe from

Serious outbreaks and other public health threats Dr. Michelle Murty is Toronto Public Health's medical officer of health Michelle Brian Goldman here. I hope we can be on a first-name basis. Of course. Yeah, really nice to meet you Brian Are you a soccer fan? You know, I'm not a soccer fan, but you know during FIFA

So who's not a soccer fan? This is not the first FIFA World Cup. Have you looked to the way public health units in other countries have handled previous World Cup events?

Yes, we've been preparing for this since almost four years now when we first found out that we were going to be a host city. We have looked at not just other FIFA World Cups, but other large mass gathering events for sporting.

And Toronto is no stranger to that. We did host the Pan Am Games in 2015. So certainly that most recent experience locally here is something we've drawn on,

but Olympics across the world, FIFO across the world and other similar events are all things we're trying to learn from to make sure we're gonna do as good a job as possible. What lessons did you and others

that Toronto Public Health learn from the Pan Am Games and other big events that are coming into effect these games? We learned all the things about, you know,

how to manage the volume of people coming into the sea, how to improve our ability to really look at surveillance in terms of understanding what things are happening in the countries that people are coming from.

You know, one of the advantages of FIFA is that we know what countries are coming to play games here. And we can get intelligence to say, you know,

if the fans from those countries are also coming here, what are some of those risks that they might be bringing? You know, what's circulating in those countries that might increase that risk of importation to Toronto.

So I think we're doing a little bit better job in that kind of surveillance because we do have better global surveillance in that respect.

We also really looked at common things are common and things like foodborne outbreaks is probably one of our top priorities because that is the kind of day-to-day

public health event that we're likely to see during an event like this. And really I think that communication, that everything is about communication in the space

and that by being really prepared and connected with all of our partners, that's how we're getting on top of issues as soon as they arise

and that we are able to intervene before they become a problem. Any memorable outbreaks at other events that might have lessons for this one?

You know, I don't know about outbreaks. We do know that they're infectious disease and we have looked at the risk of infectious disease associated with mass gathering events.

Certainly the things that pass very easily between people, especially in a respiratory or airborne manner are the things that we're the most concerned about. So something like measles is one of top of our list

to say, you know, the most infectious communicable disease that we have, but other large-scale events, things like the Hajj, we've seen things like meningitis outbreaks

to be concerned about more routine things like foodborne illness outbreaks is something that's top of mind for us. We do have experience with large outbreaks

associated with summertime events. Chronet Burger of the C&E is something that comes to mind as a recent event for Toronto. The C&E vendor blamed for 223 cases of food poisoning

reopened today, but Chronet Burgers were off the menu. It comes as Toronto Public Health identifies the ingredient behind the illnesses, the maple bacon jam. And then things that maybe don't show up

until a little bit later, like sexually transmitted infections are also top of mind for us and thinking about how can we prevent the things that might occur during the games,

but may not be identified until, you know, even days and weeks later. Given the increased risk of measles, how has Toronto Public Health beefed up disease monitoring

for that and other threats? We have been turning up the juice on all of our regular surveillance methods. So things like our disease reports,

making sure we have those open lines of connection with our hospital partners, with our primary care partners who are the most likely first places

that somebody with any kind of infectious disease show up and present with symptoms, make sure that they're going to be able to report to us, tell us about those cases. What we have also implemented is additional wastewater testing. So routinely across the city we have wastewater testing for COVID influenza and respiratory