How Long Can Norovirus Live on a Surface
It's flu flavour, and people in virtually states are beingness hit with a double whammy of flu and norovirus — the winter airsickness virus also commonly known as the stomach flu.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says 2022 is shaping up to look like an average season for both viruses, which typically come to a peak between late Jan and March.
Doctors oft focus on warning patients nigh flu, in part considering it tin can be and so deadly and in part because there are vaccines to prevent it. Norovirus is a nasty problems, but usually flies nether the public health radar. Hither are five things that may surprise you lot:
1. Information technology mutates like existent influenza does
While they are completely different viruses, norovirus and influenza are both RNA viruses, significant they employ RNA instead of DNA to replicate. That makes them both highly mutation-decumbent, which in plough makes it hard for the human allowed system to defend against them. That'due south why yous tin can get sick from norovirus year afterwards year, says Dr. Aron Hall, CDC'due south norovirus skilful.
"Every few years we run across a new strain become predominant," Hall said. "Exposure to ane strain of norovirus does not necessarily protect y'all against all strains."
2. It'due south difficult to kill
Norovirus is enclosed by a structure known as a capsid. Booze cannot become through it, which is why alcohol-based paw sanitizers do not kill norovirus.
"It'southward resistant to many common disinfectants," Hall said. CDC recommends using bleach to kill it, including chlorine bleach or hydrogen peroxide. That's why health departments oft require restaurants to use bleach to clean countertops and kitchen surfaces.
Related: Why Washing Your Hands Isn't Enough to Fight Norovirus
Information technology's too able to survive being dried out. "It tin persist on surfaces for several days even at room temperature," Hall said. Lather and water can wash it abroad, but it takes really hot water to kill it. Hand-washed dishes are specially probable to carry the virus, and it can spread fifty-fifty in ordinary laundry, so if someone is ill, information technology's important to use very hot water and bleach to destroy virus that could be on any wearable, sheets or towels.
3. Y'all tin spread it after you get improve
Just like flu, norovirus is yet being produced in your body after you get over symptoms from a tour. So people can spread it after they've returned to work.
Norovirus spreads via the fecal-oral route, so if people do non wash their hands very advisedly after they have recovered from a bout of norovirus, they can spread it to others.
"Even once yous feel ameliorate, you should notwithstanding stay dwelling house at least one to ii days," Hall advises.
4. One person can infect hundreds
Considering it spreads even after people experience improve, patients can and do go dorsum out into the earth while they are still infectious.
Combine a gummy, difficult-to-impale virus with invisible spread by people who don't feel sick, and it makes a recipe for exponential spread.
Related: Vomiting Machine Shows Why Norovirus Spreads So Fast
Restaurant workers usually go little or no paid sick leave, and so many workers come in sick, or too soon after they've recovered, and they can spread the virus to hundreds of customers. Food handlers, dishwashers, even staff who bus and clear tables, all can spread the germ.
"One ill food worker or even a worker who recovered has the potential to expose literally hundreds of people," Hall said.
And vomiting one time tin can create an aerosol of virus that settles on surfaces all around.
In 2010, nine soccer players all got sick from a plastic shopping handbag that got norovirus splashed on it.
The makes norovirus the about common cause of acute gastroenteritis — stomach upset — in the Usa. It makes 21 one thousand thousand people sick every twelvemonth in the United States — lxx,000 on average become sick plenty to go to the hospital. As many as 800 people dice, mostly elderly patients who become dehydrated.
5. Several vaccines are in the works
While norovirus is nowhere almost the killer that flu is, several teams of researchers are nonetheless working on vaccines to prevent it. Globally, norovirus kills 200,000 people a year.
It'southward hard in part because the virus mutates, and in office because the virus lives in the gut and it's hard to brand vaccines that work there.
Drugmaker Takeda has a vaccine that'due south being tested in people at present. At least one report has shown that about 20 percent of people of European origin have a genetic mutation that protects them from common norovirus strains, something that might assistance in development of better vaccines.
Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/5-things-you-didn-t-know-about-nasty-stomach-flu-n714241
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