“I thought I was gonna die.”-63 year old Texan

23 December 2012, the norovirus is making a comeback; cruise ship passengers getting sick in Texas, firefighting crews getting sick in Montana, warnings for Coloradans, local media from Minnesota and North Dakota reporting increased cases of infection, a report showing that standard kitchen disinfecting will not kill the virus, and a new mutation killing people in Japan.

The two latest incidents involve six more deaths in Japan, and a cruise ship off the coast of Texas full of sick passengers.

96 passengers on a Crown Princess cruise got sick with the most common cause of stomach ‘flu’ (aka food poisoning); the single stranded RNA norovirus.  Reports say one passenger had to be lifeflighted to a hospital.  The cruise line provided onboard medical care, but the sick passengers were made even sicker when the cruise line charged them extra for the medical care!

In Japan, the norovirus has taken a turn for the worse.  Japanese health officials now think that the virus has mutated into a more deadly form.

On 23 December, a hospital in Miyazaki Prefecture reported that six patients have died, another 27 patients and 14 hospital staff are sick.  On 05 December, a hospital in Osaka Prefecture reported two people died and 48 patients and hospital staff are sick.  There are reports that five other people throughout Japan have died.

The Japanese National Institute of Infectious Diseases is warning of a norovirus epidemic, saying they are seeing one of the highest infection rates on record.   As of the second week of November, an average of 11 cases per hospital were being reported.

At the end of 2011, Japanese health officials detected an increase in norovirus cases, and that this new version seems to be more easily spread between humans.

Back in the United States, a new Lessons Learned report on firefighting efforts in Montana revealed that several of the firefighting staff were sick with norovirus G1. It involved the crews fighting the Elbow Pass fire in 2011.  At least seven people came down with it, but after closing down the food service line and cleaning everything, health inspectors realized that it was not coming from contaminated food, it was going directly from person to person.

The fire crew supervisors took quick action and avoided what could have been a catastrophe:   “It’s not unusual in fire camps that things get passed around, but this was particularly nasty. There was all kinds of potential there to spread through the whole camp.”-Bob Harrington, Montana State Forester

In Minnesota, health officials are investigating a possible outbreak after a recent wedding party in the city of LeRoy.  They’re also blaming a food service worker, infected with norovirus, for an outbreak that hit the Verizon Wireless Center in Mankato, back in November.

North Dakota media reporting people being hospitalized with norovirus, and health officials point out that there is no vaccine to prevent it, and no medication for it once you catch it.

In Colorado, cases of norovirus are spreading like wildfire.  Since 01 December 2012 there have been six confirmed outbreaks, just in El Paso County.  Outbreaks do not equate to individual persons, this is six groups of people.  The first five outbreaks resulted in 300 Coloradans getting sick.  Health officials are refusing to reveal where exactly the outbreaks are taking place, but did concede that it involved people living/working along side other people: “…the places where it’s occurred have been long term care facilities, schools, places where there have been large numbers of people. Because it is so highly contagious, it does allow it to spread.”-Danielle Oller, El Paso County Public Health

Winter time (in the Northern Hemisphere) is considered the usual time of year for norovirus outbreaks.  And the standard schtick for defending from the virus is to keep your kitchen clean, but there’s growing evidence that doesn’t work.

According to a report published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE,  researchers wanted to see if standard restaurant dish washing practices really killed the germs that can make you sick, and they found out that it doesn’t (back in my younger days I worked in a restaurant that used an industrial strength dish washing machine that used boiling hot water, and now this study says that ain’t good enough?).  What they discovered is that while bacteria like E.Coli are killed, viruses like norovirus are not!   The norovirus was still present after the dish washing experiment.

But get this, the reason the scientists did the study was that no one has ever proven that dish washing actually killed viruses: “… little information regarding the efficacy of traditional sanitizers for the reduction of foodborne viruses from food contact surfaces is available in the literature. Thus, the objective of this study was to evaluate the sanitization efficacy of quaternary ammonium and sodium hypochlorite for the reduction of murine norovirus…”-Introduction from Efficacies of Sodium Hypochlorite and Quaternary Ammonium Sanitizers for Reduction of Norovirus and Selected Bacteria during Ware-Washing Operations

The study showed that dish washing machines did not reduce viruses: “…the survivability of MNV-1 [norovirus] on the contaminated surfaces before and after mechanical washing……were not statistically different (p>0.0001).”

Oh, but don’t throw your away your time saving machines just yet, hand washing didn’t work either: “The effect of the manual ware-washing and sanitizing solutions…..were not significantly different (p>0.0001) than the reductions achieved by the control.”

The researchers also pointed out signs that indicate that norovirus does not originate with fecal (crap) contamination.

One: Norovirus actually lives longer on clean surfaces than on dirty surfaces: “This result is consistent with those of other researchers who showed that norovirus can survive for up to 30 days on stainless steel…….and [only] 7 days on fecal contaminated surfaces….”

Two:  Most cases of contamination originate with a person who is already contaminated, who then spreads it to other people: “Most documented foodborne viral outbreaks can be traced to food that has been manually handled by an infected food handler. Hence, the hygiene of the personnel who handle food in foodservice establishments is an important preventive measure in minimizing cross-contamination of food contact surfaces and the food itself with norovirus.”

If you think about it, this study would indicate that washing your hands won’t kill the virus either, so much for all that advise coming from your local health officials and incompetent media!