Food poisoning – it’s the Norwalk virus

Friday 7th September 2007, 12:00AM BST.

A MAJOR outbreak of the Norwalk virus has been declared by the Health Protection Department.

Health Protection officers believe that the source of the outbreak was food contaminated in the food production process by someone infected with a so-called Noro virus. The head of Health Protection, Steve Smith, said that a possible scenario was that a person infected with the virus on a food production line had been sick and had not cleaned up properly afterwards. Mr Smith warned anyone who had had symptoms such as diarrhoea not to go back to work for at least 48 hours after symptoms had stopped. So far, at least 55 people have been hit by the illness, resulting in the closure of three schools.

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