ATLANTA — As Ebola rages in the Democratic Republic of Congo, that country’s national team will play a World Cup match in Georgia Saturday.
The odds of the disease reaching Atlanta are remote given international travel restrictions, but if it did, few other places could match this city’s preparedness — a city that successfully treated two health care workers with Ebola in 2014.
On Wednesday, France confirmed its first case of a new strain of Ebola imported from Congo after a humanitarian doctor fell ill with symptoms midway through a commercial flight from the country’s capital, Kinshasa.
The outbreak, which has infected more than 1,100 people and killed more than 300 in Congo and Uganda, is driven by a rare strain for which there is no vaccine or treatment.
Also on Wednesday, Congo imposed a 21-day quarantine requirement for anyone seeking to travel abroad after returning from an Ebola-affected area.
But the United States had already imposed travel restrictions weeks ahead of the World Cup.
“I think the overall risk to the public is not as high as many may think,” Dr. Gavin Harris, a critical care and serious communicable diseases specialist, said in an interview before Ebola reached France.
Harris, who is with Emory Healthcare, said Atlanta is unusually qualified to handle such a dangerous disease.
Emory has a biocontainment unit and has been collaborating for years with specialists at Grady Memorial Hospital, the Georgia Department of Public Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, down the street from the Emory School of Medicine, where Harris is an assistant professor.
In 2014, two American health care workers who were infected while treating Ebola patients in Liberia were isolated and treated at Emory University Hospital. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol were cured.
Emory’s Serious Communicable Disease Unit had been established a dozen years before with help from the CDC, which wanted such a service available for any of its employees who fell ill during overseas assignments.
“We are probably more prepared than a lot of other places are and especially in the metropolitan area of Atlanta,” Harris said.
He said fans attending Saturday’s game between Congo and Uzbekistan or any other FIFA World Cup match at Mercedes-Benz Stadium should be more concerned about domestic diseases.
Ebola and other viral hemorrhagic fevers require close bodily contact to spread, traveling through bodily fluids.
But diseases such as measles, chicken pox and flu can fly quickly through a crowd because, as respiratory viruses, they are airborne.
Harris advised precautions. Those who are immunocompromised should consider wearing a mask, and everyone should practice hand hygiene, using hand sanitizer or soap and water when possible.
Those who arrive home feeling respiratory distress, nausea or feverishness, or who develop a rash, should call for help, Harris said, noting that 911 call takers have been trained to recognize symptoms for serious communicable diseases.
Anyone who thinks they might have the measles should quarantine at home, he said, adding that the disease has been on the rise, in part due to waning rates of immunization.