Norwalk virus on cruise

You can get norovirus from an infected person, from contaminated food or water, or by touching contaminated surfaces. The virus causes your stomach or intestines or both to get inflamed acute gastroenteritis.

This leads you to have stomach pain, nausea, and diarrhea and to throw up. Vessel Sanitation Program. Section Navigation. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Syndicate. Even visitors to the Hospital were asked screening questions to identify stomach problems and, if present, were told not to see patients for 72 hours. Staff working on units hit by the outbreak wore gowns and gloves to guard against unwittingly picking up or spreading the disease.

All group meals or shared-food events were banned inside the Hospital. After three months of intense efforts to prevent the spread of infection, new infections stopped by early May The outbreak was deemed to be over, and affected units returned to normal activity. The attack rate numbers were higher for psychiatry services, at 17 percent for patients 39 out of and 38 percent for staff 76 out of Everyone infected experienced diarrhea or vomiting, while some others experienced such symptoms as chills and muscle aches.

Indeed, nearly hours of sick leave were used by staff on the CCU, hours in the echocardiogram lab, and more than 2, hours in psychiatry services. Expenses not taken into account were those associated with other areas of the hospital where few cases were reported and no restrictions were placed on the unit. Costs incurred outside of main units were not included in this estimate because researchers were not certain that the infection had indeed resulted from contact within the hospital and not from exposure in the community.

Researchers say their next step is to evaluate which specific infection control strategies and procedures are most effective at preventing noroviruses from spreading. The U. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that each year more than 23 million people become infected with Norwalk or Norwalk-like viruses, and the disease is considered a leading cause of foodborne illness, after people have contaminated food with dirty hands.

Funding for the study was provided by The Johns Hopkins Hospital. Contact us or find a patient care location.

Privacy Statement. Non-Discrimination Notice. All rights reserved. Symptoms include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and severe stomach cramps. Those infected generally recover on their own within two to three days after symptoms appear. First reported in the hospital's coronary care unit, or CCU, the JHH outbreak quickly spread over a two-week period but remained clustered in the CCU, a nearby echocardiography laboratory and a floor housing psychiatric services where patients and staff frequently interact, especially during group therapy sessions.

The outbreak was detected soon after it began when two staff members who worked closely together became ill with diarrhea. Their illnesses were immediately reported to Hopkins' infection control team, which monitors hospital operations daily for potential hazards to patient safety. A norovirus outbreak was immediately suspected because there had been numerous reports of illness throughout the Baltimore region.

As part of their investigation, nurse managers began screening all staff and patients for any signs of gastrointestinal illness. Patient stool samples confirmed that the culprit was a norovirus, and genetic testing later verified that it was the same viral strain, genogroup II.

As the investigation proceeded, staff implemented strict precautions to control the outbreak and prevent it from spreading. Patients with symptoms were placed in isolation, by being moved to either private rooms or into the same room with other sick patients.

Group therapy sessions in psychiatry were temporarily halted, and no new patients were admitted to the units primarily affected. Sick staff were sent home for as long as they had symptoms plus an additional 72 hours, sufficient time for the illness to pass and no longer be contagious.

The investigation showed that many of the initial health care workers in the CCU who became ill had attended a social event outside of the hospital, where one of the non-staff guests was already experiencing symptoms. Others likely became ill after touching a patient chart that had been handled by another ill colleague. Standard precautions to guard against infection were also followed, including a mandatory, hospital-wide staff review of basic infection control procedures with an emphasis on more frequent hand washing, accompanied by a thorough washing down of all affected hospital facilities.

Even the CCU was closed for 24 hours to allow for a thorough cleaning, with all exposed surfaces getting washed down with bleach solution. The easiest known way to kill noroviruses is through repeat washing of surfaces using bleach solutions containing at least 10 percent sodium hypochlorite. However, researchers say that even after intense cleaning efforts, norovirus particles have been found to cling to carpet surfaces, elevator buttons, bed rails and dining room tabletops.

Because the norovirus outbreak was citywide, staff from outside of JHH were not allowed to work on site, while Hopkins staff, in turn, were banned from working at other facilities.