Found this article on the local newspapers website, and thought I'd share it. We're all aware that the best thing to do is wash wash wash but thought it would be a good read!

A Vancouver microbiologist was only half-joking when she urged delegates at an international science conference to wash their hands frequently to avoid getting norovirus, the highly infectious, contagious gastrointestinal bug.

"This conference could be a great route for it," Natalie Prystajecky quipped, referring to the fact that there are about 8,000 scientists and others attending the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) annual meeting at the Vancouver Convention Centre and it is, after all, the peak month for norovirus (gastroenteritis) transmission in the Northern Hemisphere.


Prystajecky, who works at the BC Centre for Disease Control and in pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of BC, was one of four experts presenting at the symposium called Norovirus: The Modern Scourge of Food and Family. Noting that such outbreaks of the "winter vomiting bug" are a daily occurrence in January and February, she admitted in an interview that she even has a Google alert set up to tell her where and when there are reports of such outbreaks at any given moment.


While studies have shown that people who think they are good hand-washers are really not, Prystajecky said a good rule of thumb for effective handwashing is that it should last as long as it takes to sing the Happy Birthday song, not only twice through, but at a slower pace.


Since fecal contamination of water, food, surfaces, equipment, linens and all other handled objects is the culprit, she dispelled the notion that alcohol-based hand sanitizers are sufficient for cleaning hands of any fecal matter. Soap and water are the gold standard, she said.

While news stories have typically alerted the public to outbreaks, Prystajecky said an outbreak last month in Victoria, involving about 75 infected university conference delegates, showed that Twitter has become a new medium for getting the message out . Students in that outbreak tweeted about projectile vomiting witnessed in various venues like nightclubs.
Vomiting which starts suddenly is a hallmark symptom of norovirus as are abdominal cramps, nausea and watery diarrhea.

"January and February are typically the bad months," she said, noting that humidity and cooler temperatures are thought to be a factor in the spike. Last year, B.C. had 142 lab-confirmed outbreaks which likely affected thousands of people.


While outbreaks on cruise ships tend to get more publicity, it's a "democratic" fecaloral transmitted illness that spares no one. Although most people recover in under 72 hours, norovirus is more severe in the elderly.

In the U.S., 20 million people a year get it and more than two million are sick enough to need hospital treatment . About 800 deaths are caused by norovirus each year in the U.S., said Jan Vinje, of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

Vinje said researchers have shown these troubling findings about norovirus: . It is one of the most infectious pathogens .


. It mutates so different strains are emerging every three years; scientists aren't sure why "strain replacement or genetic drift" occurs.


. Once an individual is infected with one of many strains, they have immunity against that strain for only six to 12 months.
. Up to 30 per cent of those who are infectious don't have symptoms so asymptomatic food handlers can unwittingly spread it.

. Viral shedding (when it multiplies and becomes transmissible) peaks four days after exposure but such shedding continues for up to three weeks.

Norovirus has already been implicated in about a dozen American cruise ship outbreaks over the past five months but overall, cruise ships only account for about four per cent of all cases. Long-term care homes experience about 60 per cent of outbreaks. Other common venues for transmission are restaurants, parties and other social gatherings, hospitals, camps, airplanes, hotels and schools.

Charles Arntzen of Arizona State University told delegates that a vaccine - most likely a nasal inhaled type - against norovirus could be on the market within five years. In human trials so far, study subjects consumed a vial of stoolcontaminated extract and then were assigned a room in a medical testing facility where they were quarantined for a weekend.
The trial volunteers are often college students looking to make a few hundred dollars for their trouble. Early results showed that 80 per cent of participants in a placebo group were infected with the virus but only 60 per cent of the experimental vaccine group got infected, according to a report in the New England Journal of Medicine.


SENSATIONAL RESULT DUE TO BAD EQUIPMENT


At the annual convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Science taking place in Vancouver, Sergio Bertolucci, research director at the world's leading particle physics laboratory, CERN, commented on news last year in which an experiment appeared to result in the discovery of an exotic subatomic particle that moved faster than the speed of light between CERN's lab in Switzerland and a cavern in Italy. According to Einstein, the speed of light is nature's ultimate speed limit.


"There has been a very peculiar measurement over the last year which has attracted a lot of attention," Bertolucci said, expressing doubt that the result will ever be replicated. "I have difficulty to believe it, because nothing in Italy arrives ahead of time," Bertolucci quipped. He added that faulty equipment may be responsible for the sensational result.


Sun Health Issues Reporter

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