What is the next public health risk with which the long-term care industry should be concerned? The answer is norovirus.

Norovirus is a group of viruses that cause the “stomach flu,” or gastroenteritis. Approximately 21 million illnesses can be attributed to norovirus, which is the leading cause of food-borne diseases in the U.S. With what's reported to be the deadliest food outbreak in the U.S. in more than a decade currently making headlines, this message seems timelier than ever.

Because the norovirus can be transmitted by person to person, food, water, and contaminated surfaces, outbreaks hit people of all ages and can occur in a variety of institutional settings including long-term care and other health facilities.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently updated its guidelines for norovirus outbreak management and disease prevention. For professionals in high-risk environments such as long-term care and health facilities, the following preventive measures should be followed. Since we know that long-term care facilities also generally have high-risk patients, these measures can be considered even more critical.

  • Be vigilant and always operate as though norovirus is prevalent in your place of business by regularly sanitizing surfaces and areas.
  • Establish frequent hand-washing with soap as an automatic behavior for employees, especially after using the restroom, before meals, between interactions with people, or whenever they become soiled. 
  • Use gloves when handling ready-to-eat foods such as sandwiches and salads. However, the use of gloves does not replace the need for proper hand-washing.
  • Exclude and isolate infected persons – do not force or encourage employees to work when they are ill.
  • Disinfect environmental surfaces potentially contaminated with norovirus, especially restrooms and highly-touched objects such as door knobs and handrails or safety rails which are often common in an elderly healthcare setting.

The use of chemical disinfectants is one of the key approaches to interrupt norovirus spread from contaminated surfaces. Chlorine bleach has been widely recommended to disinfect human norovirus from surfaces. P&G Professional's Comet® Cleaner with Bleach is a powerful, versatile cleaner that‘s ideal for daily cleaning. Clean Quick Broad Range Quaternary Sanitizer is a product registered and approved by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for sanitizing food contact surfaces, and is an effective product for foodservice operations to have in a norovirus outbreak arsenal.

Having a sanitation recovery plan at the ready can help businesses continue operating in the event of an outbreak. At P&G Professional, our food safety and sanitation experts are at the frontline with our customers, providing products and procedures to use for a remediation plan. Additionally, P&G Professional follows the latest guidance from the CDC to understand norovirus transmission risks and outbreak control.  

There currently isn't any medication for or vaccine to prevent against norovirus. That means that following the proper prevention measures and using the most effective products are the healthcare and long-term care industries best defenses to protecting the staff and patients served. For more information, please visit http://www.pgpro.com/Default.aspx?tabid=273.  

Jeff Anderson, Ph.D. is a public health and sanitation consultant at Procter & Gamble Professional, the away-from-home division of Procter & Gamble (P&G).