Britons monitor diseases before Olympics

British health officials said they are expanding monitoring systems to protect athletes and visitors at the Olympic Games from norovirus and other bugs. The country's Home Office released a risk assessment listing "natural events" alongside terrorism, organized crime, extremism and public disorder in the run-up to the Games in London, The Daily Telegraph reported Friday. "The likelihood of a new, or newly recognized, infectious disease spreading to the UK is low but, with large numbers of visitors entering the UK at that time, we will need to be alert to these and to the more likely, but less serious, risk of a food borne illness or gastroenterinal outbreak such as norovirus," the assessment said. A spokeswoman for Britain's Health Protection Agency said steps are being taken to prevent an outbreak. "The HPA's current surveillance systems record the number of people with symptoms of infectious diseases attending GP surgeries or calling NHS (National Health Service) helplines, which inform our real-time public health response," the spokeswoman said. "In the lead-up and during the Olympics we are enhancing these surveillance systems by including emergency departments, walk-in-centers and out-of-hours GPs, as international visitors are most likely to use these services. We will be receiving laboratory reports, clinical notifications as well as reports of symptoms people are presenting with to their GPs."