US hit by new stomach bug spreading around globe

Jan 24, 2:01 PM EST -

NEW YORK (AP) — A new strain of stom­ach bug sweep­ing the globe is tak­ing over in the U.S., health offi­cials say.

Since Sep­tem­ber, more than 140 out­breaks in the U.S. have been caused by the new Syd­ney strain of norovirus. It may not be unusu­ally dan­ger­ous; some sci­en­tists don’t think it is. But it is dif­fer­ent, and many peo­ple might not be able to fight off its gut-wrenching effects.

Clearly, it’s hav­ing an impact. The new strain is mak­ing peo­ple sick in Japan, West­ern Europe, and other parts of the world. It was first iden­ti­fied last year in Aus­tralia and called the Syd­ney strain.

In the U.S., it is now account­ing for about 60 per­cent of norovirus out­breaks, accord­ing to report released Thurs­day by the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Prevention.

Norovirus — once known as Nor­walk virus — is highly con­ta­gious and often spreads in places like schools, cruise ships and nurs­ing homes, espe­cially dur­ing the win­ter. Last month, 220 peo­ple on the Queen Mary II were stricken dur­ing a Caribbean cruise.

Some­times mis­tak­enly called stom­ach flu, the virus causes bouts of vom­it­ing and diar­rhea for a few days.

Every two or three years, a new strain evolves — the last was in 2009. The Syd­ney strain’s appear­ance has coin­cided with a spike in influenza, per­haps con­tribut­ing to the per­cep­tion that this is a par­tic­u­larly bad flu sea­son in the U.S.

Ian Good­fel­low, a promi­nent researcher at England’s Uni­ver­sity of Cam­bridge, calls norovirus ‘the Fer­rari of viruses’ for the speed at which it passes through a large group of people.

“It can sweep through an envi­ron­ment very, very quickly. You can be feel­ing quite fine one minute and within sev­eral hours suf­fer con­tin­u­ous vom­it­ing and diar­rhea,” he said.

Health offi­cials have grown bet­ter at detect­ing new strains and fig­ur­ing out which one is the cul­prit. They now know that norovirus is also the most com­mon cause of food poi­son­ing in the U.S.

It’s spread by infected food han­dlers who don’t do a good job wash­ing their hands after using the bath­room. But unlike sal­mo­nella and other food­borne ill­nesses, norovirus can also spread in the air, through droplets that fly when a sick per­son vomits.

“It’s a headache” to try to con­trol, said Dr. John Crane, a Uni­ver­sity of Buf­falo infec­tious dis­ease spe­cial­ist who had to deal with a norovirus out­break in a hos­pi­tal ward a cou­ple of years ago.

Each year, noroviruses cause an esti­mated 21 mil­lion ill­nesses and 800 deaths, the CDC says.

For those infected, there’s really no med­i­cine. They just have to ride it out for the day or two of severe symp­toms, and guard against dehy­dra­tion, experts said.

The ill­ness even got the atten­tion of come­dian Stephen Col­bert, who this week tweeted: “Remem­ber, if you’re in pub­lic and have the win­ter vom­it­ing bug, be polite and vomit into your elbow.”

Posted by Randa Wagner on Jan 26 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.