Between April and July last year, there was a more than 80% decline in the incidence of reported norovirus outbreaks in nine U.S. states, likely the result of nonpharmaceutical interventions to combat COVID-19, researchers reported.
“We noticed in spring of 2020 that there was a major drop in the number of norovirus outbreaks reported to NoroSTAT” — a network of 12 states that report norovirus outbreaks to the CDC — “much larger and sooner than we would typically expect for that time of year,” Alicia N.M. Kraay, a postdoctoral fellow at the Emory University Rollins School of Public Health, told Healio.