Norovirus Outbreak in a Kindergarten: Human to Human Transmission among Children

Seowon Kim; Young Woo Kim; Sukhyun Ryu; Jin Won Kim

doi:10.3947/ic.2019.51.2.171

Norovirus Outbreak in a Kindergarten: Human to Human Transmission among Children

Infect Chemother. 2019 Jun;51(2):171-176. doi: 10.3947/ic.2019.51.2.171.

Authors

Seowon Kim¹, Young Woo Kim¹, Sukhyun Ryu^{1

2

3}, Jin Won Kim⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Epidemiology and Health Informatics, Graduate School of Public Health, Korea University, Seoul, Korea.
² Division of Infectious Disease Control, Gyeonggi Provincial Government, Suwon, Korea.
³ WHO Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Control, School of Public Health, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China. gentryu@onehealth.or.kr.
⁴ Team of Infectious Disease Control, Sungnam City's Department of Public Health, Sungnam, Korea.

Abstract

An outbreak of acute gastroenteritis was reported from a kindergarten on January 5, 2018 and investigation was conducted. A case was defined as a kindergartener presented with vomiting or diarrhea twice a day between January 1 and January 5, 2018. All kindergarteners were interviewed to identify the factor associated with case development. Fifteen (31.3%) children of a total of 48 were identified as cases, and four were confirmed to be Group II, Norovirus positive. In our study, based on the pattern of epidemic curve and different attack rate by classroom in a kindergarten, Norovirus was likely transmitted from human to human.

Keywords: Infection control; Norovirus; Outbreak; Transmission.