Norovirus: How to Protect Your Child When the Alcohol Can’t Kill

Norovirus is a virus that has long been known. It’s previously called Norwalk, often found the outbreak in winters. There’re reports of the Norovirus outbreaks in schools, mostly in kindergarten children, or in elementary and middle school children.

Common Symptoms

• This virus causes diarrhea
• Nausea and vomiting
• Abdominal pain
• Body pain
• May have low fever

Disease Contraction

Norovirus can be easily contracted by having a contact with discharges such as saliva, mucus, or sputum of infected patients. It can also spread through food preparing and eat or drink food or water contaminated with the virus. If the food is heated, it most likely has no infection problem except for later contamination such as during the food sharing.

Incubation period: The virus has a short incubation period of about 12-48 hours. Since it can spread for up to 2 weeks after infection, those who haven’t shown the symptoms can spread the virus as well.

Treatment guidelines

Currently, there’s no treating medicine or vaccine to prevent Norovirus available. The treatment will be done according to the symptoms. Diarrhea will gradually improve in 2-3 days so you should drink ORS drink to replace lost water.

How to prevent Norovirus

Because Norovirus has the high endurance to the environment, can live for many days, and cannot be disinfected with alcohol, it’s recommended to eat hot food, use a middle spoon, wash hands before and after meals, and after using the toilet every time.