Health services in London will see demand for care rise by 3-5% during the Olympic Games, despite the new system that the Health Protection Agency (HPA) has put in place to monitor and respond to outbreaks of infectious diseases and environmental hazards.1

Brian McCloskey, the agency’s Olympics lead and director for London, said that the increase would be in the order of the surge that the NHS sees in a mild winter. “It is not as much as the increased numbers that create a crisis in the health service; it is much less than that,” he said.

Much of the predicted increase would be related to excessive alcohol consumption and acute conditions rather than infectious diseases, McCloskey added. At the Olympic Games in Athens in 2004 and in Sydney in 2000 only 1% of admissions to hospital …