‘Super Bacteria’ Found in Rio Olympic Venues, Beaches

Scientists have found drug-resistant “super bacteria” off Rio de Janeiro’s most popular tourist beaches and in a lagoon that will host Olympic rowing and canoeing events in August, greatly increasing the areas known to be infected by the microbes.

Studies published in late 2014 had shown the presence of the super bacteria – classified by the US Centers for Disease Control as an urgent threat to public health – off one of the beaches of the enclosed Guanabara Bay where sailing and windsurfing events will be held for the summer Games.

A new study seen by Reuters showed the presence of the microbes – which can cause urinary, gastrointestinal and pulmonary infections – at five of Rio’s most popular beaches, including the ocean-front Copacabana where open-water and triathlon swimming will take place.

The other four beaches were Ipanema, Leblon, Botafogo and Flamengo.

Renata Picao, a professor at Rio’s federal university and lead researcher of the first study, said much remains unknown.

“We believe that there is potential for people to come into contact with these bacteria which until now were limited to the hospital. So now our approach to the situation has changed, and we need to determine what the risk is for the population because we still do not know,” said Picao.

A separate study by the federal government’s Oswaldo Cruz Foundation lab, soon to be published by the American Society for Microbiology, found the genes of super bacteria in the Rodrigo de Freitas lagoon in the heart of Rio and in a river that empties into Guanabara Bay.

Picao said the contamination of Rio’s famous beaches was the result of a lack of basic sanitation in the city of 6 million people.

“This mechanism which confers certain microorganisms the characteristic of super bacteria should not exist in bacteria which can cause human diseases. This should not be present in the sea, and this is probably a result of the lack of adequate sanitation by which hospital waste has come out to the beaches,” said Picao from her lab in northern Rio, itself enveloped by the stench from Guanabara Bay.

Waste from countless hospitals, in addition to hundreds of thousands of households, pours into storm drains, rivers and streams criss-crossing the city. That allowed the super bacteria to spread outside Rio’s hospitals in recent years.

Cleaning the city’s waterways was meant to be one of the Games’ greatest legacies and a high-profile promise in the official 2009 bid document Rio used to win the right to host South America’s first Olympics.

That goal has instead morphed into an embarrassing failure – with athletes lamenting the stench of sewage and complaining about debris that bangs into and clings to boats in Guanabara Bay, potential hazards for a fair competition.

Picao said that a variety of factors affect infection, and that it in the context of the Olympic Games, it would be difficult to determine where possible infections originated.

“These athletes, for example, who are arriving to compete in our waters – how do we know that they have not already been infected by water in their own countries when they come? This is very important information, and there is no way of us knowing if they are coming with an infection. But in the scenario in which such contamination can occur, and can only occur here, what can happen? These microorganisms are opportunist pathogens, and what does this mean? They are bacteria which normally inhabit our bodies, and when there is the opportunity for these bacteria to get into an area of the body where there should not be bacteria, then there can be an infection, and this happens when the person’s immune system is depressed,” said Picao.

Picao’s study analysed water samples taken between September 2013 and September 2014. It built on a smaller 2013 study that found super bacteria in the Carioca River in Rio. Using 10 samples taken at five beach locations, the study found super bacteria were most present at Botafogo beach – where all samples were positive.

Flamengo beach, where fans will gather to watch Olympic sailors vie for a medal in final races, had the super bacteria in 90 percent of samples. Copacabana was positive once. Ipanema and Leblon beaches, the most popular with tourists, saw positive super bacteria samples 50 and 60 percent of the time, respectively. —Reuters

(Source: GMAnetwork.com)