A Chapel Hill restaurant has been linked to an outbreak of norovirus, according to WTVD.
Health officials say 41 people reported getting sick in recent weeks after eating 
at the Nantucket Grill or attending an event catered by the restaurant.
The first illnesses were reported May 7.
Nantucket Grill has locations in Durham and Chapel Hill.
Inspectors have checked out all locations, but haven’t been able to pinpoint the source of the virus.
Following weeks of investigation, an outbreak of norovirus in February at midtown’s Mulvaney’s B&L has been confirmed by Sacramento County public health officials. The investigation found that 138 people – including at least six food service workers – reported symptoms. One 
patron later tested positive for norovirus, and two food service workers tested positive for norovirus.
The Sacramento Bee says the report did not identify if norovirus was first introduced to the restaurant by a worker or patron. The outbreak occurred over six events, including a company dinner and family-style dinner – over four days in late February. A lawyer for Mulvaney’s first informed county health officials that a number of patrons had fallen ill.
Since the outbreak was limited to a specific range of dates, and no further cases of illness were reported, Mulvaney’s has continued to operate. The popular midtown eatery passed its most recent food facility inspection on Feb. 13.
The report entailed interviews with 256 patrons, and the consumption of Turkish coffee pudding, pickled beet salad and ham showed the greatest risk of norovirus exposure. On the contrary, some foods including rib-eye and mushroom pasta did not show a link to illness. The report theorizes these dishes were prepared by non-ill restaurant workers.
Chef and proprietor Patrick Mulvaney said he’s continuing to work with county officials to make sure a similar episode doesn’t happen again.
“Obviously, I was horrified and frustrated and confused about it,” said Mulvaney. “Since then we’ve worked hand in hand with the (county) medical officer and redoubled our efforts about handwashing.”
Norovirus is incredibly infectious. The particles can aerosolize, infecting anyone who, for example, cleans up norovirus-containing barf. The virus is sturdy, and stays viable for months on a variety of surfaces.
So when the call came in, Washington County health authorities figured this was 
a typical norovirus outbreak caused by contaminated food.
Lynne Terry writes in The Oregonian that all of the people at the Hillsboro auto dealership who became ill ate take-out submarine sandwiches, served buffet-style, on the same day.
But what food safety sleuths uncovered was quite a different story, one that comes with a warning about baby changing stations.
The outbreak was reported this month in the Journal of Infectious Diseases but dates to May last year when the dealership held a staff meeting in the showroom at lunchtime.
All 16 employees working that day attended and all but two ate a submarine sandwich off a platter.
Within 30 hours, 12 employees started getting sick.
The dealership, which Washington County did not name, suspected the fast-food restaurant was to blame. So did Washington County food safety specialists.
“Any sort of buffet food is high-risk,” said Kimberly Repp, epidemiologist at Washington County. “We figured it was that.”
Plus, the food came from a take-out restaurant with historically a poor inspection record, according to Washington County officials.
The auto dealership called the restaurant about the outbreak and also informed the county, which sent an environmental health inspector. The inspector found two code violations at the restaurant, but neither explained the outbreak.
The inspector also asked about staff illnesses.
“The typical scenario would be a food handler working while sick,” said William Keene, senior epidemiologist with Oregon Public Health. “That could have been the end of the investigation.”
Only one restaurant employee had been ill in the two weeks before the outbreak, but that person suffered a severe headache, not gastrointestinal symptoms 
associated with norovirus. No customers had complained of being ill, either.
Repp discovered that something else was to blame. During interviews with employees, one recalled that a customer with a sick child had used the diaper-changing station in the women’s restroom before the lunch. When the woman and toddler left, the restroom was a mess.
The employee cleaned it up as best she could with dry paper towels. She didn’t wear gloves or use bleach but did wash her hands. She left the restroom, opened the dealership’s front door for another employee carrying the food and was the first to take a sandwich from the platter.
All five of the women who worked at the dealership that day reported using the women’s restroom. They all got sick, as did seven of 11 male employees.
Repp figured the contamination started at the diaper-changing station, and then the virus was spread outside the restroom. To be sure, she swabbed the surface of the unit and had it tested. Results showed it was contaminated with norovirus. Tests also turned up the same strain in the toddler and two of the sick employees.
The outbreak investigation marked the first anywhere to trace norovirus to a diaper changing station, Repp said.
That connection warranted publication of the investigation in the journal. But another observation stunned Repp even more.
Two weeks after the outbreak, she returned to the dealership. Staff said the unit had been cleaned by professional janitors twice since then. But Repp could see fecal material on the surface.
She decided to dig deeper, visiting 14 other public restrooms in Washington County, in parks, a restaurant, grocery stores, gas station, libraries, shopping malls and an aquatic center. None turned up norovirus, the only lab test she ran. But eight were visibly soiled.
“I was horrified,” Repp said. “None of these stations are cleaned.”
There are no Oregon regulations on sanitizing diaper-changing stations.
Even when cleaned, baby changing stations might not be sanitized. Common disinfectants kill many bacteria but are not effective against norovirus. The virus is extremely hardy and can live for days — if not weeks — in the environment. Only a few organisms can make someone ill.
A solution of bleach or hydrogen peroxide is believed to be the one way to kill the virus. But the manufacturer of the baby station at the car dealership does not recommend bleach because it could damage the plastic.
Repp said the best practical precaution is for parents not to put their children directly on the surface. She advised them to carry their disposable liners or plastic to change diapers at a station.
After struggling through a norovirus outbreak that sickened 67 people last month, Denmark’s Noma got some more bad news, relinguishing the title of world’s best restaurant to Spain’s El Celler de Can Roca
The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list compiled for a 12th year by more 
than 900 international experts for Britain’s Restaurant magazine.
In previous statements, inspectors from the Danish food ministry criticized the restaurant for not alerting authorities quickly enough and for failing to take adequate action after a kitchen worker fell sick, meaning that the illness spread to customers,while Noma blamed internal communication problems for failing to disinfect the kitchen quickly enough.
The number of people sickened at the Hilton Westchester a week ago appears to be in the hundreds as health officials try to determine what caused the intestinal outbreak.
Early indications are that the vomiting and diarrhea were caused by a norovirus, the Westchester County Department of Health said.
Jane Lerner of The Journal News reports the department would not estimate how many people became ill, but people who were at events 
there put the number in the hundreds.
Guests at a black-tie dinner held April 20 by the Pelham Picture House and an event the following day have reported developing symptoms soon after.
“I was as sick as a dog for five days,” Beryl Savage of White Plains said Monday. “I was so weak, I couldn’t even stand up.”
Organizers have said that 200 guests at the brunch got sick. It was not clear how many people who attended the Pelham Picture House event the night before came down with the illness.
Peter DeLucia, assistant commissioner of the agency’s Bureau of Public Health Protection, said the county won’t know for sure until Wednesday, but early indications are that the illness was caused by a norovirus. He urged people who are sick to stay home until they are better to prevent the spread.
Hilton officials said they were cooperating with the department.
The kitchen has not been closed, but special precautions are being taken there, including eliminating self-service buffets and public touch screens and increasing the use of sanitizers.
The infosheet below is from a norovirus outbreak at a Chicago Hilton in 2007.
Partygoers who attended a fundraiser for the Pelham Picture House at the Hilton Westchester last weekend have come down with an intestinal ailment that causes vomiting and diarrhea, health officials said Friday.
At least 100 people were sickened by what officials think was a norovirus. The number of victims could rise as the county Department 
of Health continues its investigation, a spokeswoman said. One person was hospitalized.
It was not immediately clear if all victims attended the Pelham Picture House dinner Saturday or if some were at other hotel functions. Picture House officials referred questions to the hotel.
Among the guests were actress Isabella Rossellini and Benh Zeitlin, director of the Academy Award-nominated film “Beasts of the Southern Wild.”
State Sen. Jeffrey Klein, D-Bronx, attended part of the black-tie event, and didn’t get sick, but did say, The Rye Brook outbreak “shows the need for letter grades for food establishments in the county similar to those in New York City.”
Klein wrote a 2008 report titled “Restaurant that are enough to make you sick: An analysis of unsanitary conditions at New York City and Westchester County restaurants.”
The Saskatoon Health Region is investigating a gastrointestinal outbreak that happened at a dance competition last weekend.
More than a dozen groups from Saskatchewan and Alberta gathered 
for The Performer at TCU place.
The region said they were notified that people who attended had symptoms consistent with Norovirus.
“So we’re investigating this now as a community outbreak of gastrointestinal illness,” said Deputy Medical Health Officer Dr. Julie Kryzanowski.
An instructor from Dance Ink studio in Saskatoon said about a quarter of her students and their parents have gotten sick.
In another installment of this is why we cook seafood at my house, 240 people have been sickened in three Australian states after consuming oysters with norovirus.
The contamination was caused by a broken sewerage pipe on a private 
property in Dunalley which leaked human waste into waters used by an oyster farm.
According to media reports, it was the second incidence of contaminated oysters in southern Tasmania in a week, but health authorities say the two cases are a coincidence.
Norovirus infection has become the leading cause of acute gastroenteritis in children under 5 in the U.S.
Payne et al. report in The New England Journal of Medicine that norovirus infection leads to an estimated 14,000 hospitalizations, 281,000 emergency room visits, and 627,000 outpatient visits a year.
The virus causes severe stomach pain, nausea, diarrhea and vomiting. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it leads to 800 
deaths a year, but the vast majority of people infected recover completely.
For the new study, the researchers counted laboratory-confirmed cases in three United States counties in 2009 and 2010, so the sample may not be representative of the entire country. During that period, norovirus was confirmed in about 20 percent of cases of acute gastroenteritis in children. Infection with another virus, rotavirus, has become less common since the introduction of a rotavirus vaccine.
There is no vaccine and no cure for norovirus infection, and it is highly contagious. There are various strains of the virus, and some may be more potent than others.
Background
Cases of rotavirus-associated acute gastroenteritis have declined since the introduction of rotavirus vaccines, but the burden of norovirus-associated acute gastroenteritis in children remains to be assessed.
Methods
We conducted active surveillance for laboratory-confirmed cases of norovirus among children younger than 5 years of age with acute gastroenteritis in hospitals, emergency departments, and outpatient clinical settings. The children resided in one of three U.S. counties during the years 2009 and 2010. Fecal specimens were tested for norovirus and rotavirus. We calculated population-based rates of norovirus-associated acute gastroenteritis and reviewed billing records to determine medical costs; these data were extrapolated to the U.S. population of children younger than 5 years of age.
Results
Norovirus was detected in 21% of young children (278 of 1295) seeking medical attention for acute gastroenteritis in 2009 and 2010, with norovirus detected in 22% (165 of 742) in 2009 and 20% (113 of 553) in 2010 (P=0.43). The virus was also detected in 4% of healthy controls (19 of 493) in 2009. Rotavirus was identified in 12% of children with acute gastroenteritis (152 of 1295) in 2009 and 2010. The respective rates of hospitalization, emergency department visits, and outpatient visits for the norovirus were 8.6, 146.7, and 367.7 per 10,000 children younger than 5 years of age in 2009 and 5.8, 134.3, and 260.1 per 10,000 in 2010, with an estimated cost per episode of $3,918, $435, and $151, respectively, in 2009. Nationally, we estimate that the average numbers of annual hospitalizations, emergency department visits, and outpatient visits due to norovirus infection in 2009 and 2010 among U.S. children in this age group exceeded 14,000, 281,000, and 627,000, respectively, with more than $273 million in treatment costs each year.
Conclusions
Since the introduction of rotavirus vaccines, norovirus has become the leading cause of medically attended acute gastroenteritis in U.S. children and is associated with nearly 1 million health care visits annually. (Funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.)
KGW reports one person has died and 15 other people were sickened after a meeting in Forest Grove last Friday that may be linked to a norovirus outbreak, health officials said.
As first reported in the Oregonian, 43-year-old Kevin Weeks died Tuesday. Weeks, of McMinnville, was among 40 people to attend an Oregon Forests Advisory Committee meeting in Forest Grove.
Days after the meeting, Weeks and 15 other people who ate fruit salad at the meeting became sick with severe gastrointestinal issues, including vomiting and diarrhea, according to Tri-County Deputy Health officer Dr. Paul Lewis. He added that the specific cause had not been determined but the symptoms and time frame were consistent with norovirus.
An autopsy was conducted Thursday and the State Medical Examiner’s office says Weeks’ cause of death was unknown, but did not appear to be norovirus. Lab results should be back in four to five days, and should reveal more.
The State Forests Advisory Committee met in the Forest Grove Community Auditorium. Breakfast and lunch were catered.
Weeks was a spokesman for the forestry department.