{"id":246558,"date":"2026-01-19T17:30:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T17:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/246558\/"},"modified":"2026-01-19T17:30:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T17:30:10","slug":"doctors-in-fifa-world-cup-cities-worry-about-er-capacity-strain-on-health-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/246558\/","title":{"rendered":"Doctors in FIFA World Cup cities worry about ER capacity, strain on health system"},"content":{"rendered":"

Doctors in Canada\u2019s FIFA World Cup<\/a> host cities say they\u2019re concerned the already strained health-care system will buckle if a sudden, unexpected surge slams emergency departments during the games.<\/p>\n

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Dr. Catherine Varner, an emergency medicine physician in Toronto, wrote an editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal Monday raising concerns about vulnerabilities in the health-care system that she says need to be addressed before more than 300,000 soccer fans set foot in Toronto and Vancouver in June.<\/p>\n

Both cities have hosted mass gatherings in the past. Local and provincial public health officials are actively anticipating health risks, with Public Health Ontario flagging measles, food-borne illnesses and COVID-19 as potential concerns. Toronto and Vancouver also have wastewater surveillance systems set up to detect infectious disease outbreaks during and after the World Cup.<\/p>\n

But Varner said it\u2019s the anticipation of unexpected events that gives her chills when she walks into a night shift while the city is rowdy, and the hospital is running at 100 per cent capacity, or above.<\/p>\n

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During Games 1 and 7 of the MLB World Series, Varner said she saw a surge in trauma, alcohol and substance-use-related visits in the emergency department. But stitching a person\u2019s head from a bar brawl is not what stuck with her.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s expected and it\u2019s well documented. The challenge was thinking about an urgent need for a lot of hospital beds. In my hospital that night, there was only one ICU bed available,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

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She contemplated what might have happened if there had been a crisis at that moment. \u201cI don\u2019t know where we would have decanted our emergency department patients,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

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Varner referenced the fire on New Year\u2019s Eve\u00a0at a bar in Switzerland as an unexpected event that overwhelmed the closest hospital, as several dozen badly burned patients required emergent care.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t think of a hospital right now in downtown Toronto that could take on 80 patients all of a sudden,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Toronto emergency physician Dr. Raghu Venugopal said it doesn\u2019t take much to imagine the cascade effect that a tragic, hypothetical event such as a stadium bleacher collapse would have on local hospitals.<\/p>\n

\u201cMultiple broken bones. Internal organ injuries. Hospitals overwhelmed. ORs need to be activated and you need beds. We don\u2019t have beds,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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Even on a \u201cboring\u201d Friday afternoon, he said they don\u2019t have enough beds for an 84-year-old patient with RSV who is left on a hospital gurney in the hallway.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, why would we have the capacity at a global event?\u201d<\/p>\n

As medical director of the Vancouver Infectious Diseases Centre, Dr. Brian Conway said measles is his main concern. A measles outbreak infected more than 80 people after the Vancouver Olympics in 2010.<\/p>\n

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Since then, measles vaccination rates have declined in Canada, and the contagious illness has resurfaced, with ongoing outbreaks, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy concern might be that someone has paid thousands of dollars for tickets, for a hotel room and so on, and gets told by a public health official here in British Columbia, that they need to isolate in their hotel room for a week or 10 days, and they would \u2026 potentially look for a reason not to do that,\u201d Conway said, referencing the challenge of asking an international fan to isolate if they are exposed to measles.<\/p>\n

Public Health Ontario published a risk assessment document last week\u00a0to advise Ontario\u2019s government, public health organizations and health providers, who are responsible for high-quality health care during the games.<\/p>\n

Measles, food-borne illnesses and COVID-19 were ranked as moderate health risks for the games.<\/p>\n

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They recommend monitoring\u00a0epidemiological trends before FIFA, planning for potential surge capacity for outbreak activities and public health investigations, and considering the feasibility of enhanced surveillance during the tournament.<\/p>\n

The report also acknowledges there is always general uncertainty of what the global and local epidemiological trends will look like months from now and recommends health officials re-evaluate risks closer to June.<\/p>\n

During the pandemic, hospital staff and administrators communicated with one another to maximize critical care resources at a time when every intensive care bed was needed.<\/p>\n

Many of those protocols have continued, and Varner said hospitals should band together in advance of anticipated surges.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s plan early so that we\u2019re not doing it on the fly in the middle of the night trying to figure out how best to provide care for a patient when we don\u2019t have the resources available.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\t&copy 2026 The Canadian Press\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Doctors in Canada\u2019s FIFA World Cup host cities say they\u2019re concerned the already strained health-care system will buckle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":246559,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[245,8316,163,521,85,46,105,6866],"class_list":{"0":"post-246558","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-canada","9":"tag-fifa-world-cup","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-healthcare","12":"tag-il","13":"tag-israel","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-world-cup"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246558\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}