New Health Security Operations Center Ramps Up for World Cup Monitoring

When millions of people travel and congregate at mass events, health risks follow.

A new partnership led by Georgetown University and MedStar Health seeks to provide early and actionable information about emerging disease risks around the 2026 FIFA World Cup. The National Center for Health Security and Resilience’s Health Security Operations Center (HSOC) will begin operations 1 June.

More than 6.5 million soccer fans are expected to travel to North America for the World Cup starting in June. This creates a unique need for coordinated, real-time health monitoring, according to a press release about the HSOC.

The World Cup is an extraordinarily complex event, so while any mass gathering (pilgrimages to Mecca or the Olympics, for instance) will likely trigger the launch of a public health security operations center from local or national authorities, this year’s tournament could use the extra help to get data out promptly, says Rebecca Katz, PhD, MPH, director of Georgetown’s Center for Global Health Science and Security and director of the HSOC.

“We wanted to see what we could do to work independently—but in support of public health officials—and help with some of the information gathering and share information cross-jurisdictionally,” she tells Security Management.

In addition to the World Cup’s complexity, the public health environment in the United States is a challenging one right now. Federal government agencies are reprioritizing where resources are allocated, and the U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization could mean that public health information is collected and distributed more slowly than in previous events, Katz says.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will put out health alert notices when there’s an outbreak, pushing information to medical centers and other healthcare providers. But its process has slowed down recently, Katz says.

“We are anxious to push information very quickly, so we will be partnering with [the University of Nebraska Medical Center] to push early alerts out to healthcare systems and providers if necessary and make sure we’re backchanneling that to CDC so they’re aware of what we’re pushing,” she explains.  

The center will use data from wastewater monitoring, hospitalizations, and real-time health reports from host cities to monitor infectious disease risks and deliver timely, actionable information to health officials, healthcare systems, and the public during the tournament. Some arenas where matches will be played are also participating by sharing wastewater data for monitoring.

The partnership will produce daily situation reports, regular video briefings, standup calls, and health alert notices if significant risks are detected. It will also work with public health communicator Dr. Katelyn Jetelina from Your Local Epidemiologist to monitor online conversations to identify emerging health concerns and translate health data in an evidence-based and easy-to-digest way.

For the World Cup, Katz says public health professionals in the partnership are watching for a wide range of risks, including respiratory viruses, gastrointestinal issues, measles, large-scale vector-borne disease outbreaks happening in the Western Hemisphere now (such as dengue fever, chikungunya virus, and yellow fever), sexually transmitted infections (including mpox outbreaks), and opioid abuse disorders.

“The United States has all those vectors to carry all these diseases, but it’s been a very, very long time since we’ve had sufficient number of people with those pathogens who could sustain transmission,” she says. “So, I don’t really worry about large-scale outbreaks, but I do worry that we will have some cases of dengue and chikungunya.”

For many of these health risks, early detection of infection can make all the difference, Katz says. For measles, there’s a five-day window between detection in wastewater and the first emergency room visit, she says. That’s a lot of time that healthcare facilities can use to alert clinicians, prepare facilities for high-risk patients, and start communicating to their local communities.

Individuals can also use the information to take early action. If the spread of dengue fever is detected, communities and health groups can inform individuals about symptoms and how to protect themselves by using mosquito repellant and removing standing water where mosquitos can breed.

“It’s a complicated environment, but this is a story of a lot of different organizations and individuals from the public health community coming together, and with very little resources, trying to fill a—it’s not a gap, per se—a place where the public health authorities aren’t terribly strong at the moment,” Katz says. “We’re hoping that we can stand up, that we can help be that air traffic control for sharing information, that we can help provide that early indication if something does happen, and that we can help support government partners if there is a need for response.”

More than 350 organizations and individuals—including hospital emergency managers, state and local health officials, federal agencies, and tournament organizers—are already enrolled to receive daily situation reports.

If you or your organization would like to receive reports from the National Center for Health Security and Resilience HSOC related to the World Cup, email [email protected].

For more articles about 2026 FIFA World Cup security and risk management, check out the latest Security Management collection.