The public health team watching the World Cup

As millions gather for the World Cup, a scrappy public health operation led by a team at Georgetown is tracking disease threats using surveys, wastewater and online chatter to spot outbreaks early. PIEN HUANG, HOST: Are you one of the millions of people who have gone to a fan zone or stadium or bar to watch World Cup soccer? Well, at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., there's a small team of public health experts who are watching you, collectively. It's an effort outside of government working to fill in for gaps that have opened up in public health since the Trump administration pulled the U.S. out of the World Health Organization, cut funding and pushed out thousands of workers from the federal workforce. Katelyn Jetelina is a Texas-based epidemiologist working on the new effort called the Health Security Operations Center. She's collecting population-level data based on people's thoughts and experiences. KATELYN JETELINA: And this includes about - a survey to about 2,500 people that are actually going to the World Cup game, so we can hear from them, as well as people within a 30-mile radius of the stadiums. HUANG: Amy Lockwood is really into wastewater. She analyzes data from waste for the company Verily. AMY LOCKWOOD: A lot of the information that we're finding is coming from wastewater surveillance, and pretty much any pathogen you can think of we can find in wastewater. HUANG: Jetelina says the data comes together in ways that are helpful to health officials. …