News & Perspective

Editor's Note: CIDRAP's Promising Practices: Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Tools online database showcases peer-reviewed practices, including useful tools to help others with their planning. This article is one of a biweekly series exploring the development of these practices. We hope that describing the process and context of these practices enhances pandemic planning.

(CIDRAP News) – Sick restaurant workers, including one who vomited in the kitchen, and inadequate cleaning products contributed to a norovirus outbreak at a Michigan restaurant in 2006 that sickened at least 364 customers, the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported today.

(CIDRAP News) – Norovirus outbreaks in the United States appear to have increased sharply since the beginning of last year, probably fueled by two new strains of the gastrointestinal pathogen, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports.

(CIDRAP News) – At first glance, the Web page looks like an overhead shot of a fantastic game board: a map—identifiably Los Angeles—sprinkled with faceted roundels in a half-dozen colors.

(CIDRAP News) – Following 25 cases of norovirus infection in people who ate raw oysters from San Antonio Bay in Texas, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has warned against eating raw oysters taken from the bay after Feb 1.

The patients ate raw oysters at a Maryland event the weekend of Feb 9 to 11, the FDA said in a Mar 2 news release. Patients tested by the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene were found to have the virus.

(CIDRAP News) – A team of researchers has achieved what has been until now a frustratingly elusive goal: a tissue-culture model that allows natural growth in the lab of norovirus, one of the most common and least understood causes of gastrointestinal illness worldwide.