Noroviruses haven’t always been called noroviruses. In 1929 Dr. John Zahorsky wrote about a history of gastrointestinal illness events, which would become norovirus After seeing children develop sporadic cases of vomiting, supplemented by watery diarrhea each year between November and May, over 30 years of clinical practice, he coined the term winter vomiting sickness. According to a 1950 Time Magazine article, Dr. Zahorsky was a pediatrician working extolling the vitures of good sanitation during birth and infant care – one of the fathers of disease prevention.

Within ten years [after graduating medical school]  he had set some doctors sniffing with his idea that children’s colds were more often caused by contagion than by exposure to bad weather. Soon he was protesting against taking newborn babies from their mothers and massing them in an aseptic nursery.

In 1968, one of these winter vomiting sickness outbreaks occurred in an elementary school in Norwalk, OH. Teachers and students were both affected, with 32% of the primary cases spreading illness to others in their families and homes. After a collaborative investigation with researchers from NIH and Walter-Reed Army medical center a causative agent was found in the feces of the ill — a 27nm sized virus particle. Zahorsky’s illnesses then took on the name Norwalk. Since then, the name has morphed to Norwalk and Norwalk-like viruses, which begat noroviruses.

It’s not even officially Fall yet and norovirus outbreaks at schools, hospitals and nursing homes are popping up. Winter is usually a lot worse for outbreaks of noro (primarily a food handler-to-food-to-person or person-to-person illness) as the virus is a bit more stable in the cold, increasing the chance of it staying around in the environment (so folks can pick it up).

This week, kids at a school in the UK had to delay the start of the school year after an outbreak of noro felled the staff after a buffet lunch provided during an in-service day. According to Laura Herbert of the Wokingham Times,

The primary school was due to open its door to pupils on Monday, September 5, but staff sickness, now believed to be an outbreak of norovirus, meant pupils could not start until last Friday.

A letter to parents from Headteacher Suzie Wright posted on the school’s website said: “We held an inset day at the school on Friday, September 2, which included all of our staff (52 in total). It is usual on a day such as this to provided staff with a light lunch. “As our catering staff were involved in the inset day and our school kitchen was having its routine annual deep clean, a buffet lunch was provided by an outside company. I can confirm our kitchen was in no way involved in the lunch preparation.

“Over the course of the weekend staff began to become unwell with sickness and diarrhoea. By early Sunday evening it became clear to me we would have insufficient staff to open the school.