IT HAS almost certainly happened to you. You suddenly start feeling very ill and rush to the bathroom. Soon you don’t know which way to turn as you alternate between projectile vomiting and diarrhoea. And if that were not enough, your head throbs, your muscles ache and your stomach hurts.
We tend not to take norovirus too seriously because the misery doesn’t last long. The vast majority of people recover after a day or two. But outbreaks can affect so many people at once – particularly in confined environments like childcare centres, barracks, hospitals and cruise ships – that they cause a lot of disruption. It is common for wards to have to be closed and even schools shut.
What’s more, a huge number of people fall sick each year. Norovirus hit the headlines in the UK this winter when a million people caught it in just a couple of months. Yet such numbers are not unusual. In the US, norovirus infects 20 million people a year, at an estimated annual cost of $8 billion in lost productivity and healthcare bills.
For the very young and very old, or people with weakened immune systems, the disease can cause more than misery. It hospitalises 70,000 people each year in the US and kills about 800. At least 200,000 people die of it in poorer countries, mostly children under 5.
Yet there are no treatments or vaccines for norovirus. So do we just have to put up with this nauseating infection, or is there something we can do?
There are reasons why norovirus runs rampant; it …