SURABAYA, FactualNews.co – Norovirus infected at least 50 children at a kindergarten in Zigong, Sichuan Province in Southwest China on Wednesday (11/25/2020). The attacks add to a series of norovirus outbreaks around China in recent months.
The Yantan district health department received reports of kindergarten children vomiting, and confirmed the outbreak as a noravirus on Thursday.
“After epidemiological investigations and nucleic acid tests, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) confirmed that the vomiting was caused by a norovirus infection. All children are in stable condition and are receiving treatment in hospital with mild symptoms, “the health department said in an announcement Global Times, Thursday (26/11/2020).
The earliest cases of vomiting were reported on Wednesday morning, followed by other students in the afternoon. After school, the parents continued to report cases of vomiting and diarrhea to the kindergarten teacher.
On Thursday morning, most of the infected children were sent to the hospital for IV treatment. Staff at the district CDC are sampling children and asking questions about the course of their illness, The Paper reports.
Follow-up treatment and cause tracing will be released following a medical investigation, Zigong CDC told Global Times on Thursday (26/11/2020).
As the number 1 cause of acute viral gastroenteritis, norovirus infects 685 million people worldwide each year, and is increasingly emerging as a public health problem in China.
Reported Global Times, on November 13, a high school in Fujian Province, East China was hit by an outbreak of norovirus, which led to school suspension, with more than 30 students infected.
On October 29, a number of kindergarten children in Liaoning Province, Northeast China were infected, causing the kindergarten to be temporarily closed. Earlier that month, a similar outbreak occurred at a university in northern China’s Shanxi Province, overwhelming the university’s healthcare services.
There is no norovirus vaccine on the market. In February 2019, Chinese authorities approved a clinical trial for the world’s first tetravalent vaccine against the virus. The vaccine, after four years of development, could theoretically prevent 80 to 90 percent of norovirus infections, reports Xinhua News Agency.
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