Bollywood Berkeley dance linked to noro outbreak

University of California at Berkeley, home of all things hipster, is ground zero in the latest Norovirus outbreak at a college after several dozen students became extremely ill with symptoms.

bollywood.berkeley.noroOfficials said UC students from all over the country got sick after they attended a dance competition at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland.

Some were participating in the Bollywood Berkeley dance competition at the venue where Prince performed last weekend.

Since February 20, officials received 29 reports of students with norovirus-like symptoms, with three confirmed cases of the highly contagious bug.

A handful, but certainly not all of those who became ill attended the dance competition on February 20.

A South Asian student group called Indus puts on the Bollywood Berkeley event every year. “Yeah, it was pretty bad. Pretty severe Sunday, pretty severe Monday, but after that I just completely went away. So, it was very abrupt and then it went away,” Ronak Ahir said.

Of the 200 dancers who came from all over the country, about three dozen got sick on the way home. They all recovered within a couple of days.