In 2009 celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal was running the Fat Duck restaurant in Berkshire, and over a six-week period, 529 diners were also running within 48 hours of sampling a tainted tasting menu costing £130. On December 5th last year, for example, the staff canteen at Russell Investments Center’s skyscraper offices in Seattle, Washington State, was reportedly the suspected source of a norovirus outbreak affecting hundreds of employees. Noroviruses are as tough as old boots and expert inducers of projectile vomiting, so can cause havoc on cruise ships and in institutional and other settings. Viral gastrointestinal infections are acquired via the faecal-oral route: viruses shed in faeces end up in someone else’s mouth, typically through food or water, although virus transfer can occur from touching contaminated surfaces. Further, while healthy individuals do not suffer long-term ill effects, there may be severe outcomes for children, the elderly or those with compromised immune systems.Īccording to Gould: “They can become severely dehydrated, and in severe cases may develop renal impairment.” This, she writes, ignores the fact that the illness is distressing and can last for several days. Infection control expert Prof Dinah Gould of Cardiff University highlights the mistaken belief that norovirus gastroenteritis is “always without serious consequences and the infection is frequently described as mild and self-limiting”. Norovirus gastroenteritis has been a notifiable disease in Ireland since January 2004.
Known today as norovirus, its alias, the “winter vomiting bug”, is a misnomer, with year-round outbreaks occurring, albeit with a winter peak.įor example, data from the HSE’s health protection surveillance centre show that in April, May and June of 2015 there were 25 outbreaks involving 385 people, and by mid-November 2015 a total of 87 outbreaks had affected 1,508 people.
In October 1968, 116 pupils and teachers at the town’s Bronson elementary school contracted diarrhoea and vomiting.īy 1972, electron microscopy of faeces samples taken from the outbreak identified a novel agent, subsequently named Norwalk virus. In the gazetteer of human illness, and forever associated with the most common cause of acute infectious gastroenteritis in western Europe and North America, is Norwalk in the US state of Ohio.
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