Treba li Olimpijadu možda otkazati

In an open letter to the World Health Organisation, the signatories, who included a former White House science adviser, said the current plans for the Games needed to be revised “in the name of public health”.

However, the WHO rejected the idea and said that suspending the Olympics or staging them elsewhere would “not significantly alter” the spread of the virus, which is linked to serious birth defects.

The open letter cited growing scientific studies that suggest the Zika virus is responsible for birth defects, including microcephaly. In rare cases, it can also cause Guillain-Barré syndrome, a neurological disease that results in temporary, and sometimes fatal, paralysis.

The experts fear that these defects could spread more rapidly around the world as a result of an influx of Olympic visitors to Rio, which has a high incidence of Zika cases.