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Norovirus Vomiting Bug - Pandemic Levels With 3.6 Million Sick In UK

More than 3.6million workers have called in sick so far this week, a survey suggests.

A record one in eight staff has been laid low, with the winter vomiting bug, norovirus, cited as the main culprit.

Chronic coughs and colds have also seen workers take to their beds.

Health experts warn that sickness may soon reach pandemic levels with large swathes of the population being struck down.

Aaron Ross, of FirstCare, the absence management firm which produced the figures, said: “This is the worst period of sickness we have ever seen and it comes at a very bad time for employers.

“Most organisations wound down during the unusually long holiday period and they are experiencing real trouble starting up again.

“There has been a lot of press coverage surrounding the norovirus and people are being advised to stay at home for two days after the symptoms have stopped.”

Norovirus - which causes uncontrollable projectile vomiting - is said to be costing the economy £ 40million a day in lost productivity.

One hundred hospital wards were closed to admissions last week in an attempt to halt the march of the virus, which is 100,000 times more infectious than salmonella.

Mr Ross said: “Wards are closed, shops and restaurants are limiting their activities, deliveries and service calls will be late.

“All of this will have a knock-on effect on those staff who are at work as they will be put under more pressure to cover absent colleagues.

“The extra stress and strain will, in turn, make these employees more susceptible to falling ill themselves.”

He said that 4 per cent of the employees covered by FirstCare had called in sick on Monday with a similar pattern seen yesterday.

“This is the closest thing to a pandemic that employers will have seen for years and it should be a wake up call for businesses that don’t have contingency plans for high sickness rates,” he added.

The spread of norovirus can be restricted by washing hands regularly and disinfecting much-used items, such as remote controls and telephones.

Other tips include ventilating a room after someone has been sick and not sharing towels, toothbrushes or cutlery.

Norovirus symptoms last for up to three days and it is contagious for another two days or so.

The very old, very young and those already seriously ill with other ailments risk complications from dehydration.

There is no treatment other than drinking plenty of liquid.

Mr Ross said the impact of norovirus showed that firms should prepare for even more serious illnesses such as bird flu.

He claimed that some of the absenteeism could be explained by stress brought on by the cost of the festive period.

“With Christmas credit card bills round the corner and a cold winter approaching we are likely to see continued high sickness rates,” he said.

“I recommend that businesses bring forward the pay day for January as well as December because it is a very long month.

“The weather also has a profound effect. It has been a mild winter so far and that is why there have been so many coughs and colds - the weather has not been able to kill them off.”

Source

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Dengue Fever Could Spread To United States

Dengue fever, a potentially deadly virus usually found in the tropics, could begin spreading widely in the U.S. as mosquitoes that transmit the disease move into more states, according to two leading epidemiologists.

The disease has already struck Hawaii, Texas and Puerto Rico after decades of absence in the U.S., Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and colleague David Morens write in the Jan. 9 Journal of the American Medical Association. They expect the threat to persist with increased air travel and urban development.

More than 760,000 cases of dengue and almost 20,000 cases of its deadly form, dengue hemorrhagic fever, were reported in the Americas in the first 11 months of last year, according to the Pan American Health Organization. With no specific treatments or proven vaccines to prevent the infection, an outbreak could overwhelm communities, Fauci and Morens said.

“This is an important problem, and our options for control and prevention at the moment are not very good,” said Morens, Fauci’s senior scientific adviser, in a phone interview today. “It’s easy to forget when a disease has been away for a long period of time.”

Dengue can be caused by four kinds of flavivirus, a family of viruses that also includes yellow fever and West Nile. The Aedes mosquitoes that transmit dengue have been around for hundreds of years and have re-emerged in greater numbers since efforts to prevent yellow fever waned in the 1970s, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Vomiting Bug Sweeps UK - Closes 100 Hospital Wards - Expected To Get Worse

Infections from the debilitating norovirus stomach bug will peak this week as millions return to work after the holidays and spread the germs, the government has warned. People are advised to protect themselves by washing their hands thoroughly at all times.

The virus, which was responsible for closing more than 100 hospital wards last week, can also be guarded against by disinfecting bathrooms and washing cups and dishes properly.

Health Minister Ivan Lewis said: “We want to get the message across to everyone that washing your hands properly with soap and warm water, or even an alcohol gel, can help reduce the spread of infections and help protect you, your family and those around you.’

NHS workers are also urged to be vigilant and to remember the guidelines of the ‘clean your hands campaign’.

With noroviruses, toilets are particularly important as many of the germs are passed on via toilet seats that are not cleaned properly. Some studies suggest that as many as 50 per cent of women and 75 per cent of men fail to wash their hands after visiting the bathroom.

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Bird Flu Toll Rises To 19 In Egypt

The death toll from bird flu in Egypt has risen to 19 with Egyptian health officials on Monday reporting the deaths of two women.

The number of women who died from the strain in a single week rose to four including two other women who died just days ago, since the lethal H5N1 strain first appeared in the country last year.

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Pakistan Has Eight Cases of Human Bird Flu

Five members of a family in Pakistan are among eight people who may be the country’s first human cases of bird flu, the World Health Organization said. At least one brother died.

Pakistan’s national laboratory found the lethal H5N1 avian flu strain caused the infections in three brothers and two cousins from the same family, according to information from a Dec. 15 WHO statement and Gregory Hartl, a WHO spokesman in Geneva. Another brother from the U.S., who attended a funeral for one of the victims, and his son tested negative for the virus at a hospital in Nassau County, New York, Hartl said.

Medical teams have been sent to Pakistan to assist local authorities in investigating the cases, in which two people had only mild symptoms, Hartl said. Doctors are monitoring for signs avian flu may be adapting to humans by killing fewer people, fostering its spread.

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Newer, Deadlier Cold Virus

Doctors are warning patients about a dangerous new form of an old cold virus that is causing severe respiratory illness and even death in what appear to be healthy Americans.

It’s called Adenovirus serotype 14, and it has infected Americans in four states - Oregon, Texas, Washington, and New York.

Ad14, as it is known, was first identified in 1955. It’s one of more than 50 serotypes.

And unlike other respiratory infection, doctors say Ad14 often affects those who appear healthy.

“It seems to be affecting individuals that had no other medical problems,” says Dr. Tiffini Lucas. “Viruses spread easily and their ability to mutate can occur quickly and we worry about that.”

Sheilah Heilah Lynch has had a cold for four days.

“I’ve been feeling congested, nasal congestion,” she said. “Runny nose and feeling tired.”

Her doctor says she just has the common cold and should be feeling better in a couple days. But for someone suffering from Adenovirus 14, symptoms would be more intense -  severe coughing, fever, trouble breathing - and they would progressively get worse .

At least 1,035 cases of Adenovirus have been reported this year, and at least ten people have died.

There is as of yet no specific antiviral medication to treat the illness. Instead, doctors are treating the symptoms. The medical community says despite the outbreak, patients should not panic if they find themselves feeling ill.

“I don’t think we’ve reached this epidemic level where we have to sound the alarm for patients,” said Dr. Lucas.

Doctors say the best way to prevent the spread of Adenovirus 14 is hand-washing, covering your mouth when you cough, and staying home from work when you feel sick. But doctors warn if your symptoms get worse, or you experience shortness of breath, to call your doctor.

Source

Mystery Strain of Encephalitis Has Killed Nearly 500 Children In India

An outbreak of a mystery strain of encephalitis has killed nearly 500 children in northern India this year and seems to be getting worse, doctors said Thursday.

Doctors in Uttar Pradesh state, the center of the outbreak, have been unable to identify the strain of the disease, which has affected only children, killing 484 of them since the beginning of the year, said state Health Minister Anant Kumar Mishra.

And the outbreak is spreading quickly, doctors said.

“There has been a sudden spurt in encephalitis cases over the last month. Over 100 children have died and encephalitis cases are pouring in from eastern parts of the state,” said Dr. Akhilesh Srivastava, a senior government doctor.

Outbreaks of mosquito-borne encephalitis are common in Uttar Pradesh, a state of 180 million people where most public health facilities are out of reach for the overwhelmingly poor population.

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Ebola Outbreak Worsens In Uganda

The Ebola outbreak that has killed 18 people in western Uganda appears to be spreading, officials said Sunday, as authorities examined a sample taken from a patient who died in the south of the country.Government officials told AFP that the disease, which flared in September, had spread to three new zones in the poor Bundibugyo district near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where it killed 26 recently.

Virologists were meanwhile examining a sample taken from a suspected victim who died overnight in Mbarara region, 160 kilometres (100 miles) south-east of the affected district, said Sam Zaramba, the director of medical services.

Health officials said several dozen medics and support staff had fled the Bundibugyo area when their co-workers became infected with the virus in an outbreak that has already killed 18 people and infected 61 others.

But Ambrose Amumpe, a local adminstrator, spoke of a higher death toll, telling AFP: “We started seeing strange illnesses and deaths in the first week of Novemeber. We suspect that up to 30 have died.”

Virologists were also investigating an isolated patient in the neighbouring Port Portale district as well as the fatality in Mbarara, near Rwanda which has boosted border surveillance.

“There are fears that the disease has spread,” said a top health ministry official, who requested anonymity.

“We are waiting for the results from the samples,” he said of the two cases that have spread panic in the east African nation, where an ebola outbreak killed at least 170 people in 2000.

Meanwhile, a doctor who contracted the virus while treating others in Bundibugyo was under observation in the capital’s main Mulago hospital, colleagues said.

A team from the Atlanta-based Centres for Disease Control (CDC) is expected in Uganda on Tuesday with equipment to help contain the disease and further the studies on the mystifying virus, the health ministry announced.

The disease, which is fatal in 90 percent of cases, is spread by contact of body fluids, primarily contamination of blood.

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Study Calls HIV in D.C. A Modern Epidemic

The first statistics ever amassed on HIV in the District, released today in a sweeping report, reveal “a modern epidemic” remarkable for its size, complexity and reach into all parts of the city.

The numbers most starkly illustrate HIV’s impact on the African American community. More than 80 percent of the 3,269 HIV cases identified between 2001 and 2006 were among black men, women and adolescents. Among women who tested positive, a rising percentage of local cases, nine of 10 were African American.

The 120-page report, which includes the city’s first AIDS update since 2000, shows how a condition once considered a gay disease has moved into the general population. HIV was spread through heterosexual contact in more than 37 percent of the District’s cases detected in that time period, in contrast to the 25 percent of cases attributable to men having sex with men.

“It blows the stereotype out of the water,” said Shannon Hader, who became head of the District’s HIV/AIDS Administration in October. Increases by sex, age and ward over the past six years underscore her blunt conclusion that “HIV is everybody’s disease here.”

The new numbers are a statistical snapshot, not an estimate of the prevalence of infection in the District, which is nearly 60 percent black. Hader, an epidemiologist and public health physician who has worked on the disease in this country and internationally, said previous projections remain valid: One in 20 city residents is thought to have HIV and 1 in 50 residents to have AIDS, the advanced manifestation of the virus.

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Mutated Cold Virus Causes 10 Deaths

A mutated version of a common cold virus has caused 10 deaths in the last 18 months, U.S. health officials said Thursday. Adenoviruses usually cause respiratory infections that aren’t considered lethal. But a new variant has caused at least 140 illnesses in New York, Oregon, Washington and Texas, according to a report issued Thursday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

CDC officials don’t consider the mutation to be a cause for alarm for most people, and they’re not recommending any new precautions for the general public.

“It’s an uncommon infection,” said Dr. Larry Anderson, a CDC epidemiologist.

The illness made headlines in Texas earlier this year, when a so-called boot camp flu sickened hundreds at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. The most serious cases were blamed on the emerging virus and one 19-year-old trainee died.

“What really got people’s attention is these are healthy young adults landing in the hospital and, in some cases, the ICU,” said Dr. John Su, an infectious diseases investigator with the CDC.

There are more than 50 distinct types of adenoviruses tied to human illnesses. They are one cause of the common cold, and also trigger pneumonia and bronchitis. Severe illnesses are more likely in people with weaker immune systems

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